The home comfort message is one that is also fully embraced by the Malta, N.Y.-based Building Performance Institute, which provides a range of home-energy certifications to trade contractors, general contractors and remodelers around the country. Last year the group was responsible for overseeing the accreditation of over 1,800 professional certifications. In 2009, through a huge increase in the number of registered training partners, certifications are expected to increase dramatically to 12,000, says the group’s chief executive, Larry Zarker.

“Here is why this works,” explains Zarker. “Contractors, through apprenticeship or experience, end up entering a trade and learn one or two skills. They become good at that skill. And, in the end, what you have is a collection of trades in the home that know their skills pretty well, but don’t know very well how different products interact with the rest of the house. But the house must act as a system or you end up with problems with the performance of the home and the homeowner generally pays for that. This will show up as higher utility bills, durability problems that could lead to moisture or other kinds of issues. We offer a real integrating function. We train contractors who learn how to think of the house as a system.”

The Business Opportunity

Many remodelers and contractors have profitably added home-performance audits along with professionally installed home-performance solutions to their businesses. They have either received training and certification or they have retained an outside home-performance firm to test their remodeled homes before and after each project. In Mountain View, Calif., Spectrum Fine Homes, a remodeling firm run by Susan and Bob Davis, CR, CGBP, has conducted home energy audits on all of its major renovation projects over the last five years. The Davises and key managers simply made the decision to operate a very green company and the firm has never looked back. Aiding them in the process is an outside auditing firm, Sustainable Spaces. Using duct blasters, blower door tests, and thermal imaging cameras among other energy-auditing tools, Sustainable Spaces offers a full report on a home’s deficiencies prior to the creation of any design solution. (For a full look at the Spectrum Fine Homes energy audit approach, see the December 2007 issue of Qualified Remodeler or go to www.qualifiedremodeler.com and find the article in our archives.) In the Pacific Northwest, an iconic firm in the remodeling industry, the Neil Kelly Company, with a 60-year history in high-end, discretionary remodeling, has adopted a similar policy over the past year.

Coming at it from the exterior contracting background, Michael Lotesto of Performance Exteriors has built a new company in suburban Chicago organized around the discipline of energy audits. Instead of selling windows, roofing and siding as a home improvement, Lotesto, equipped with his BPI training, offers paid audits that lead to opportunities to provide professional home improvement solutions. Among the many upsides says Lotesto, is being seen as a true professional who offers a scientific solution, enjoying a higher level of credibility with customers, and being paid in the range of $500 for a first consultation at a home.

In Chester, N.J., former NAHBR chairman Bill Asdal, CGR, became a certified building analyst through BPI several years ago and since then has become a strong advocate not only for the business merits of home energy audits, but also for the larger possibilities offered to the remodeling industry.

“Testing houses gives us the proof that we design and build our solutions correctly, that we do our jobs well,” notes Asdal. “Remodelers need to be held accountable for the performance we are selling, and testing is the best way to do it.”

Among the homes that Asdal has remodeled in recent years, two are of note. His company, Asdal Builders, demonstrated that a drafty Victorian could be made to consume almost zero energy when solar arrays were added to a solid energy efficient envelope. More recently, he teamed with a remodeler in Pittsburgh to remodel a typical worker cottage and reduce its energy costs by 30 percent annually. By using the results from that house, he has constructed a financial argument that investing in “load reduction” can actually beat a 10-year, stock market average (before its recent precipitous decline) in terms of return on investment. “We’ve got to get people looking past the higher first-cost prices that are required to make homes highly efficient. We have to help them see the longer term gains both in energy savings as well as comfort.”

From a societal standpoint, the potential benefits of increased home performance are huge, giving credence to the level of funding anticipated to be offered within the new administration’s stimulus package. According to the EPA, if every homeowner reduced their home’s energy consumption by 20 percent, it would save over $20 billion annually and would cut 200 billion lbs. of CO2 emissions each year.

“Of course you’d have to get all of the 128 million homes in the country to go along with that 20 percent reduction to make that change,” says EPA’s David Lee, “but it shows how dramatic the benefits could be. Right now, the least-cost option out there to reduce the nation’s energy costs is through energy conservation and efficiency. Before you put solar on a home, or before a local utility builds a nuclear power plant or a clean-burning coal plant, it is wise for us as a country to invest in energy efficiency. For that reason, we feel that the Home Performance with Energy Star program, among other programs pushing greater efficiency, will become very popular as we try to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and address the problem of climate change.

“And we’d talking about a whole new economy.”

Home Energy Audit Training and Resources

Building Performance Institute: www.bpi.org
Home Performance with Energy Star: www.energystar.gov

Home Auditing Specialists

GreenHomes America: www.greenhomesamerica.com
Sustainable Spaces: www.sustainablespaces.com
Sears Blue Climate Crew: www.searsblueclimatecrew.com