Air leakage costs you $100+ a year on your energy bills. Here’s what you can do about it.
Whether you feel a draft while sitting on your couch or an unwelcome breeze while walking upstairs, you likely have felt some of the symptoms of air leakage. And because air leakage causes energy waste, you’ve certainly felt its impact on your energy bills.
Luckily, you’re not alone and there’s an affordable fix. In our work in Long Island, we find that the typical home is 2-3 times as leaky as it should be. It’s like keeping a window open all year round!
Why is this a problem?
A healthy home needs to have fresh air circulating from the outside. If your home has too much air circulating from the outside, your home will be drafty and your energy bills will be higher than they need to be.
In the wintertime, warm air will escape from your living space into your attic, and will be replaced by cold air rushing in from the basement. Not only will you shiver as you feel the drafts come in, but your heating system will need to burn more fuel to fight the invasion of cold air.
During the summer, it works in reverse: warm air will force its way into your house through the attic, pushing your cool and expensive conditioned air out of your home. This means that your air conditioner will need to work harder to keep you from sweating. And that extra air conditioning costs you your hard-earned money!
Can’t I just put more insulation in my attic?
Unfortunately, excess air leakage is a problem that more insulation will not solve. Insulation is porous, so air flows through it easily.
To take care of this, you’ll need to painstakingly seal up the many air leaks with one-part foam. Air sealing work isn’t complicated, but it’s labor intensive—in a typical home in Long Island, we install over half a mile of sealing foam.
It’s not your windows! Blame your attic.
To most homeowners’ surprise, the majority of air leakage starts in the attic. Your attic is full of holes, cracks, and gaps which allow air to leak in and out of your living space. Here are few examples of places you’ll find attic air leaks:
Top Plates
It’s common to find gaps between the drywall and top plates (beams in your attic floor). If you lift up your insulation, you will likely find long, thin gaps where air flows in from your attic and into the space between your walls.
Copyright Sealed Inc., 2016.
Recessed Lighting & Wire and Pipe Openings
Recessed lights are also common culprits. Simply put, recessed lights are a hole between your ceiling and your attic, and if the lights are not properly sealed and capped, your lights will be a major source of leakage.
In some cases, the gaps around a lighting fixture are so large that you can see from the attic directly into the living space!
It’s also common to find gaps where pipes and electrical wires enter the attic. These are smaller, but significant sources of air leakage:
Do I need a professional to do this?
Air sealing is not complicated, but it’s painstaking. Done properly, it requires 20 hours spent on hands and knees in a tight attic spaces that are either frigid or sweltering depending on the season. So while you don’t need a professional, you’ll likely want to hire one.
Want to learn more or fix your home’s air leakage problem?
Sign up for a no-cost home energy assessment with Sealed.
4 Signs That It’s Time To Replace Your Attic Insulation
“How do I know when to replace my attic insulation?” Homeowners always ask me this question, especially those with older houses.
Replacing old insulation is crucial to protecting your home (and your energy bill) from outside elements. Here are four clues that it’s time:
1. Upstairs feels colder
Copyright Rachel Coleman, 2010.
If you think about it, your attic insulation is like a winter hat for your home. If the hat is worn out, you’ll feel it near the top of the house.
This may mean colder bedrooms upstairs, cold closets, or chilly floors. This may also be a situation in which you need to seal air leaks in your attic.
Note that in the summertime this is reversed. Upstairs will feel warm because the cold air is escaping through your attic.
2. Energy bills increase
If your energy bills have gone up, this could be a sign that your insulation is getting old. As fiberglass insulation ages, it degrades, leaving gaps where air can escape.
In other words, your heater or air conditioner needs to work even harder to maintain the temperature inside your home. Replacing insulation is a great way to keep your conditioned air inside and lower energy bills.
3. The insulation looks old and ugly
Copyright Sealed Inc., 2016
Like many of us, insulation doesn’t age well. Attics are open to the outside air, leaving them vulnerable to dust, mice, roaches, raccoons, dirt, wind, heat, and cold. Unsurprisingly, old insulation will sometimes lose its yellow or pink hue and become gray and dusty.
Go up into your attic and take a peek. Like what you see? If not, it may be time to replace it.
4. It does not meet Department of Energy (DOE) standards
The DOE has spent a lot of money researching effective insulation levels. Why not take advantage of those studies?
For New York and New Jersey, the DOE recommends 15 inches of attic insulation. Anything below that number may lose you money and conditioned air.
You may not need to replace your insulation—you may just need more of it. Check out the DOE’s website to see the recommended level for your region. It’s likely you’re under-insulated.
It’s the end of January, and winter has finally arrived in the Northeast. Cold snaps like these often prompt homeowners to upgrade their insulation.
At Sealed, we’re big fans of blown cellulose insulation for attics and walls. It’s cost-effective and gets the job done far better than fiberglass, particularly when it comes to keeping your home warm and reducing your heating bills.
At first, blowing cellulose insulation into your attic may seem like the perfect DIY project. It sounds simple: go into your attic with a hose and blow insulation until it stands 15 inches tall. What’s so hard about that?
It turns out that properly insulating an attic requires a couple challenging steps before blowing the cellulose. You might think twice before doing them yourself.
Air seal before you insulate
It’s critical to seal your attic’s air leaks before installing cellulose insulation. By sealing the leaks in your attic, you will double the energy and comfort impact of blown cellulose.
The average home in the Northeast is 2-3 times as leaky as it should be, and the majority of leaks are found in the attic. At Sealed, we routinely find leaks along top plates, around recessed lights, and in areas where wires and pipes enter the attic.
Air sealing is unfortunately painstaking and time-consuming work. We typically install half a mile of foam when sealing an attic, requiring 10-12 man-hours spent on hands and knees in a cramped, uncomfortable space.
In case you’re wondering, it’s also a bad idea to blow insulation and then go back to air seal. Air sealing is difficult enough without needing to dig through 15 inches of cellulose.
Install baffles before you insulate
First, what the heck is a baffle?
Baffles prevent moisture accumulation in an attic by making sure that air is circulating properly.
The baffle does a few key things:
• Keeps the soffit vent clear of insulation, allowing air to flow freely
• Allows you to insulate as close to the vent as possible without obstructing it
• Directs air away from the insulation, preventing it from blowing around like confetti
Installing baffles incorrectly or neglecting to install them can lead to a serious mold problem in your attic. Minor mistakes by an amateur can cause major headaches and home health issues down the road.
The Verdict
While blowing cellulose in an attic isn’t terribly complicated, it needs to be done in combination with proper air sealing and correctly installed baffles. It’s better to get the whole attic done professionally than to install only blown cellulose by yourself.
Correcting the 3 Biggest Energy Efficiency Misconceptions
Energy efficiency is a powerful, but very misunderstood energy resource. Here at Sealed we see the good, the bad, and the ugly every day. Unfortunately, policymakers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders do not always appreciate the true opportunities and challenges in this market.
The three biggest misconceptions we hear people talking about are:
Customers care the most about lowering energy bills
Better financing is the highest impact solution
Efficiency is too messy and complicated to scale
These misconceptions cause real damage in the market because they lead to policies, business models, and marketing strategies that will inevitably fail.
Energy efficiency shouldn’t be misunderstood. Take it from Kanye:
When we die, the money we cant keep but we prolly spend it all cause the pain aint cheap.
Sealed and others in the market are solving real “pain” points, which go above and beyond the cost and savings of efficiency improvements. This should be acknowledged and integrated into everyone’s market approach.
Customers care the most about lowering energy bills
Of the three misconceptions, this is the most common. It is of course intuitive and rational to believe that monetary savings is the primary motivating factor for customers to improve the efficiency of their home.
However, this simply isn’t true for most customers. While saving money is always a good thing, the amount of money that can be saved is pretty minimal. Most customers finance their improvements, which means they compare their savings (e.g. $100 per month) to their loan payment (e.g. $75 per month), and they only view the difference ($25 per month) as real savings.
$25 per month of savings simply isn’t enough money to motivate most customers, especially when it involves lots of paperwork and an upfront or long-term financial commitment.
The good news is that customers care a lot more about the comfort and the quality of their home. When you literally can’t use a room in your house during the summer and winter because it is too hold and cold, a situation faced by many of our customers, you are very motivated to solve your problems.
Energy savings are important, but only in the context of solving these comfort and other home problems. The way we put it is that energy efficiency is the only home improvement you can make that will generate a cash-flow stream.
Energy efficiency is therefore even better than solar. Rather than invest in an asset that won’t impact your quality of life, you can invest in energy efficiency improvements that make you more comfortable today, and generate cash in the form of lower energy bills well into the future.
For better or worse, we are all are pretty short-term thinkers. Calculations of discounted lifetime value, ROI, and payback are very abstract compared to the fact that you don’t need to wear a sweater the next time you’re watching football in your living room.
Better financing is the highest impact solution
Another major misconception is that better financing is the key to driving demand for residential energy efficiency. Whether it is PACE, on-bill, or securitization, financial engineering is often cited as the largest leverage point in market growth.
No matter how attractive the financing in terms of lower interest rate, longer term, or easier credit, a loan payment is a certainty. Whether that loan payment is based on a 3% or 7% interest rate does not have a big impact on customer decisions.
What is uncertain to the customer, however, is the savings benefits they will receive so they know what it will “really” cost. Are the savings $100 a month, $50 a month, or $25 a month?
Based on Sealed’s research, customers only believe 25% of the estimated energy savings, literally leaving money on the table simply because they can’t value it in their decision-making.
To put this in perspective, on a project with $100 per month of savings, increasing energy savings confidence from $25 to $75 is the same as lowering the interest rate on a $10,000, 15-year loan from 12% to 3%.
Energy savings uncertainty is therefore the highest impact solution to grow the energy efficiency market. While more attractive financing is a very important piece of the puzzle, customers value “Confidence in Energy Savings” more than twice as much as “Attractive Financing”, according to a study by GDS Associates a few years go.
This is why Sealed has focused on providing an energy savings guarantee to our customers, and are working hard to make energy savings seem just as real as a loan payment.
Efficiency is too messy and complicated to scale
A third misconception is that the process of scoping and delivering energy efficiency improvements is just too messy and complicated to scale. The general thought process is that solar panels are very easy and straightforward compared to insulation, air sealing, and HVAC upgrades.
The truth is that energy efficiency improvements are very straightforward, and only require a few key data points to scope (home dimensions, current insulation levels, and mechanical system specifications). And while installing energy efficiency improvements can certainly be messy for the construction crews, it is actually fairly simple work.
The work itself is hard, but very simple. Air sealing involves using about half a mile of industrial foam in a customer’s attic. Insulation requires spraying cellulose (treated newspaper) into attics and walls. Wall insulation is usually completed by taking off a single panel of siding, drilling a small hole into the sheetrock, and then spraying the insulation into the wall cavities. Millions of HVAC upgrades are completed each year and are fairly standard.
All of the work is therefore done outside or in the nooks and crannies of the home (attic, crawl spaces, basement, etc.). There are many great companies across the country that do this type of work, and are more than happy to hire as many people as they need if they have enough work for them.
Fixing these misconceptions would go a long way to creating the type of market conditions necessary for residential energy efficiency to scale. Rather than focus on energy savings, we can focus on comfort. Rather than putting all of the brainpower into incrementally better financing solutions, we can increase confidence in savings. And instead of worrying about the complications of energy efficiency, we can focus on driving demand.
Sealed is doing our part to change these paradigms, and we hope the rest of the market follows us in that endeavor!
When Going Mainstream Makes Sense: Oil-to-Gas Conversions
Do you heat your home with oil? If so, you are part of a small minority nationwide that’s continues shrinking every year. Compared to 48 percent of gas-heated homes, only 5.3% of homes in the U.S. used oil for heating in 2014, down from 7.6% in 2005.
And it makes sense—even with the oil price around $60 per barrel, natural gas still remains up to three times cheaper per unit of energy. Oil-to-gas conversions are one of specialties here at Sealed, so let’s dive right in!
How do you know if an oil-to-gas conversion is right for you?
The rewarding journey to a better, more efficient home starts with our free home energy assessment. Since Sealed participates in New York State’s Home Performance with Energy Star program, the government covers the cost of determining whether gas conversion is the right move for you. Hooray for our tax dollars being put to good use!
But knowing that it makes sense to convert to gas is only the first step. Even if it does, typically, you would have to spend time researching government rebates and dealing with your local gas company (and enjoying their lovely hold music).
Sealed takes care of this for you. While you spend your Sunday watching football (or reading a book), we are working behind the scenes, crunching the numbers and looking into the best deals for your gas conversion project.
Rebates Galore
Why do we do this? The rebates might be confusing to navigate, but they are tremendously helpful in lowering the cost of a gas conversion project. (More tax dollars working for you… isn’t that beautiful?)
For starters, the state of New York pays for 10% of your gas conversion—easily $800 saved—and offers a generous no-money-down, 15-year financing plan for gas conversion at a 3.49% yearly interest. These terms make the monthly loan payment lower than your monthly savings from the conversion. (In other words, it’s like getting paid every month!)
There are even income-based rebates of up to $5,000 available through the Assisted Home Performance with Energy Star Program. And once your gas conversion is complete, you’ll even be eligible for an additional rebate from National Grid worth up to $600.
What do all of these rebates have to do with Sealed, you ask? We work on your behalf to secure these rebates so that we can offer you the most gas conversion option. And while we are at it, we’ll work with you on other ways to save money and improve the comfort of your home, including air sealing and insulation.
Wait… But Why?
Why convert to gas at all? Heating your home with gas is one of the most rewarding improvements you can do for your home! Here’s why:
Save Money. The most obvious reason for converting your home’s heating system to gas is to save all the money you’re throwing away on oil! The math is simple. Heating a home with gas costs about half as much as heating a home with oil. Yes, half!
Less Maintenance. Gas-fueled boilers stay cleaner and require fewer repairs, so you save money by getting fewer visits from your technician.
Add Value to Your Home. Not only is gas cheaper to maintain and costs less than oil, but potential buyers will also appreciate having gas to fuel appliances, such as fireplaces, pools, or stovetops.
Cleaner Air. Natural gas emits almost zero particulates and burns cleaner than oil, so you can come home from work and take a deep breath of fresh air.
Never Run Out of Fuel. Without a permanent tap to a supply of oil, oil-burning homes run the risk of running out of fuel. With an underground pipeline to a constant supply of natural gas, you never have to worry about being short on fuel.
Say Goodbye to Oil Deliveries. Ditch the anxiety of waiting for the oil company to show up with a delivery on the coldest days of the year. Instead, gas is always there for you when you need it.
“But surely oil is better in at least some ways, right?” you say. Well, we could not really think of anything, and most American households would agree. So take advantage of the rebates and let Sealed simplifies the process. Schedule your free home energy assessment to see if natural gas is a good fit for your home, too
Aging houses and aging men have a lot more in common than you would think. Both can get somewhat rickety, develop structural issues, and start sagging a bit. Happens to the best of us in our golden years.
But the best idea so far came from a certain Republican presidential hopeful, who shared his views with us in a phone interview recently. “HAIR PLUGS!”
What did Mr. Trump, the man with the hairdo that has taken America by storm, mean by that outlandish remark?
“The two business secrets that I’ve never shared with anyone before? Hair plugs and air plugs. My hair tells people I mean business, and sometimes, older gentlemen like myself need hair plugs to maintain that truly spectacular appearance.”
But what about those air plugs?
“My buildings are my business. Trust me, I went to the best business school in the world,” the real estate mogul continued.
“You can’t sell leaky homes with drafts and uneven temperatures, and not sealing them up with air plugs is the biggest mistake you can make as a homeowner. I would’ve never made my billions in real estate by owning buildings like that – they’re just not comfortable!”
Mr. Trump, ever the expert in all things, including energy efficiency, went on. “It’s as simple as this. Not sealing your home is the same as leaving a window open 24/7. That’s insane! Leave that kind of nonsense to Rosie O’Donnell.”
While much of what Trump says tends to be rather divisive, his comments about air plugs are well founded. Sealing cracks in your home with caulk can reduce air leakage and create a snugger, more comfortable home. Call Trump at 844-473-2533 to hear what else he has to say about it!
(This post is, of course, fiction, and none of the quotes is real or purports to represent Donald Trump’s views.)
It is an exciting time at Sealed. We have doubled in size in the last few months and announced a groundbreaking partnership with National Grid. We are building a team that is focused on doing something really special, with the potential to make a very significant environmental, economic, and social impact. Nobody else is doing what we do, and the possibilities are literally endless.
Sealed started over 2 years ago in an apartment in Queens, and we are now closing in on a scalable model to radically reduce the energy and environmental impact of our homes.
As we continue to grow the company, we want to build our team with people who are also looking to make an impact and invest their time and energy in important goals.
Check out our jobs page if you want make the best decision of your life.
Still not convinced? Here are the three biggest reasons you should join our team...
Why work at Sealed?
Sealed is working to prevent catastrophic climate change, the most important problem in the world today
Sealed enables you to have the biggest individual impact with people and the environment
Working for Sealed is the single best investment you can make in yourself
You should not work for Sealed if you are just looking for a job that pays the most (Sealed does not) and demands minimal effort (we demand maximum effort).
You should work for Sealed if you want to work hard and make a real difference. We are not interested in “doing good” for it’s own sake, but rather believe that we will only solve our energy and environmental challenges if we make saving energy an insanely profitable enterprise. To that end, please do come and work for us if you have a genuine desire to save the world.
Most Important Problem
By working for Sealed, you will be solving the most important problem in the world today. Climate change and related energy issues are the single biggest challenge facing our generation. If we don’t find a way to prevent catastrophic climate change, we will be the last generation to enjoy anything resembling peace and prosperity. The earth itself will be fine, but we will not be.
Energy efficiency represents the largest and most realistic strategy to save the planet. The cleanest energy is the energy not used. It is not as sexy as solar and wind, but it is far more practical and plentiful, making up over 50% of carbon reduction potential.
The problem (and opportunity) is that there is a lot more efficiency that we are not capturing. The majority of the energy efficiency opportunity is in single-family homes. Just regular people that are trying to stay warm in the winter, stay cool in the summer, and keep their bills as low as possible. The solutions are simple: insulation, air sealing (hence “Sealed”), efficient appliances, smart thermostats, etc.
The biggest barrier towards scaling residential energy efficiency is that people don’t believe the energy savings. You don’t invest in something if you don’t think it is real. Sealed is solving this problem by guaranteeing savings to the customer, profiting only if they save more energy than we guarantee.
Sealed is squarely focused on solving the most important problem in the energy space today - making energy savings real to homeowners across the country.
Biggest Individual Impact
Sealed is not the only organization trying to combat climate change. You can work for government, non-profits, or other companies with a positive environmental impact. At Sealed, however, you will see a direct impact every single day while building the platform for scaling an industry.
Sealed does not work on global climate-change treaties and we do not try and change people’s opinions (Fox News climate-deniers want to have a more comfortable home with lower energy bills too). What we do is create real, concrete impact by reducing the amount of energy (and carbon) needed to fuel our everyday lives.
Last year, each full-time Sealed team member made the following carbon impact on average:
Sealed is also not piggy-backing on existing technology trends. For example, we think solar is awesome, but it is already being addressed by companies like SolarCity and SunRun that are now scaling at a different level of maturity.
Energy efficiency, by contrast, is smaller and is therefore a much bigger challenge. At Sealed, we go big or go home.
Single Best Investment
In addition to making a big difference in the outside world, working for Sealed will also be the single best investment you can make in yourself. The faster you learn and grow, the more valuable you will be in your career, which translates into money, power, prestige, etc.
At Sealed, we promise a high Rate of Learning (“ROL”). We push everyone towards their maximum potential. Basically, we will make you or break you (sometimes both).
Everyone at Sealed is encouraged (and expected) to learn and grow at a fast rate. That means mastering your role, adding new skillsets, and becoming a leader within and beyond the company. You can go from knocking on doors to managing a marketing team. You can go from performing home energy assessments to building a new office. You can go from manning the phones to running all office operations.
As one of our new Home Energy Advisors, Matt Soble, recently said:
“I learned more in 3 weeks at Sealed than an entire year of coursework in college. These are hard skills like software, systems, and technical learning, but also soft skills like sales and how to grow a business.”
Working for Sealed also happens to be a lot of fun. You get to work with a diverse set of people (we even have Republicans!) that are all born hustlers, and will help you to reach your potential. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we make sure that everyone has a great experience.
If you are interested in joining the team, check out our jobs page or email us directly. Yay Sealed!
Hello readers! My name is Catherine and I am one of the summer interns here at Sealed. Before I launch into my first blog post, a brief introduction is in order.
I am undergraduate at NYU, where I study environmental science. A few fun facts about myself:
I’m from New Jersey. The entire Sealed team mocks this mercilessly. So do I.
Subfact: I live next door to Snooki (nope, not a joke).
I am attempting to read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace this summer (1,000+ pages and 70+ pages of endnotes). It is not going well.
My dream meal consists exclusively of baked desserts. My version of the food pyramid is in the shape of a crepe.
And now, on the fun stuff—saving you oodles of money!
Did you know that you are entitled to thousands of dollars of home energy rebates from the State of New York and your utility companies? Getting rebates from the state and utility companies may seem like a bureaucratic nightmare, but we at Sealed make it painless and simple.
The first step is to sign up for a free home energy assessment to qualify for the rebates. About a week after your assessment, your Home Energy Advisor will not only tell you the energy savings we can guarantee, but also the amount you’ll save off the project price through rebates. Even better, we’ll handle all the paperwork to successfully get you these great deals. By the time you’re done, you may feel like this:
Okay, maybe you won’t be laying down on a bed of cash, but you get the point!
So how much money are we talking about? For starters, you’ll qualify for the High Efficiency Measure Incentive (HEMI), which gives you an automatic 10% off of all energy-saving improvements, including insulation, air sealing, and heating systems. You can save up to $3,000 with this rebate!
The state rebates are even higher for homeowners with lower incomes. If your household income falls below the median household income of your county, you are eligible for a 50% rebate up to $5,000. That’s some serious coin.
Many local utilities also offer their own rebates for particular energy-saving improvements. In Long Island, PSEG offers homeowners $1,000 for sealing up their leaky central air-conditioning ducts. In other words, it’s basically free stuff! National Grid, the Long Island gas utility, offers up to $800 to homeowners that are installing new gas boilers and water heaters. And if you’re converting from heating oil to natural gas, you’ll get an additional $480.
Of course, we all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch—who pays for these rebates anyway? Well, put simply: YOU have already paid for them. Every month, you’re paying charges to your utilities that fund all of these rebates. It makes even more sense to take advantage of these savings!
If you want to get thousands of your own dollars back while making your home a more valuable and comfortable place, get started by signing up for a free home energy assessment with Sealed. We’ll take care of all the rest!
Caulking is probably the least complicated part of decreasing your energy bill. The idea is simple: cracks and openings in the structure of your house allow colder air from the outside to enter, leaving you with a leaky and uncomfortable home.
The fix seems simple as well: grab a tube of caulk (silicone, foam, rubber), put it in the caulk gun, and caulk away!
“Here’s the catch,” says Dan Hochman, our home energy advisor. “For an average home in Long Island, you need to caulk about half a mile of cracks and openings, or about 2 laps around a typical running track.”
For starters, you would need a lot of caulk to cover those two laps. In a typical job, our contractor partners could use more than a hundred standard 10 oz. tubes of the stuff.
But that is not all, says Dan. “Most of the air leakage happens in places that are difficult to access. For example, the seams between the upper-floor walls and the attic floor are usually the biggest culprit.” To reach those, contractors have to spend quite some time crawling on their knees around the attic with a caulk gun in their hand.
Nevertheless, caulking is one of the most cost-efficient ways to improve your home’s energy use and level of comfort. In the winter, cold air leaks inside, causing drafts and leads to your boiler burning through more fuel. In the summer, hot air flows in, making your air conditioner use more electricity.
Not sealing the leaks, on average, amounts to leaving a 20-inch window open in your house all year long. Therefore, a good caulking job will typically pay off in less than a year by saving you money on your energy bills. Give your home a fix now, and you won’t feel that nasty draft next time a polar vortex comes to town!
(Nerd alert. This is Andy again, giving another light economic policy analysis of energy efficiency. Feel free to ignore if you are a normal person.)
People in energy policy circles tend to talk in relatively blase terms when it comes to energy efficiency. The conventional wisdom is that energy efficiency is massive, simple and cheap:
“The ‘fifth fuel’, as energy efficiency is sometimes called, is the cheapest of all. A report by ACEEE, an American energy-efficiency group, reckons that the average cost of saving a kilowatt hour is 2.8 cents; the typical retail cost of one in America is 10 cents. In the electricity-using sector, saving a kilowatt hour can cost as little as one-sixth of a cent, says Mr Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute, so payback can be measured in months, not years.”
The implication (intended or not) of this is that efficiency is the “low hanging fruit” and we don’t need to pay attention to policies and incentives of energy efficiency compared to solar, wind and other forms of clean energy.
And so while, for example, solar power receives government and utility incentives that represent $10,000 or more per home (30%+ of a $30k system), energy efficiency receives far less (typically $2,000-$3,000 per home for a much smaller project in an equivalent whole-house project).
But while the overall story of efficiency as the cheapest energy is true, the actual costs and benefits of energy efficiency tend to be obscured and sometime exaggerated.
There are a few key factors that drive this:
1. The “cost” of energy efficiency is the incentive cost
The “cost” of energy efficiency in reports and analyses by ACEEE and Lazard report the incentive cost per energy unit saved (typically kWh), not the actual cost of the measure. So, if a utility company gives a rebate of $100 for a more efficient refrigerator that saves 1000 kWh per year and lasts for 10 years, then the energy efficiency “cost” is $0.01 per kWh even though the full cost of the refrigerator was $1,000 not $100 (or $0.10 per kWh).
With a few exceptions (see below), these rebates cover part but not at all of the cost of energy efficiency measures. New York, for example, covers 10% of all qualified energy efficiency improvements while Massachusetts covers 75% of improvements up to a cap. This means states and utilities are not just simply building energy efficiency power plants, but must also have consumer participation.
On the other hand, solar, wind and, other energy sources are calculated just based on the actual costs to produce the energy (the $1,000 equivalent in the example above). If the cost of the energy is less than alternatives (and/or less volatile), then it’s a pretty simple cost-benefit equation, as we’ve seen with the fast adoption of solar in the last few years.
Energy efficiency is different. As we’ve discussed at length on the Sealed blog, most people don’t believe in the energy savings and therefore discount them heavily. This is the problem we are Sealed are trying to solve.
But on the other side of the ledger, energy efficiency has major “non-energy benefits” - policy lingo for the physical value the improvements create. This ranges from the comfort benefits of insulation and air sealing, to health benefits for a more efficient boiler, and the control from a smart thermostat. And while some policymakers are trying to “quantify” these benefits, they are ultimately valued by each individual consumer differently.
Or as the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency (NAPEE), the closest thing we’ve had to national energy efficiency guidelines, put it:
“This [cost-effectiveness] estimate would be termed the ‘program administrator cost’ for the saved energy; because customers typically pay a substantial portion of total efficiency investment costs, the ‘total resource cost’ of these savings would be higher than 2 cents.”
2. Current efficiency cost estimates are inflated by lighting
The 2 to 3 cents per kWh cost for energy efficiency that is regularly thrown around is also heavily biased towards lighting, which make up a large percentage of total savings via state and utility programs.
NSTAR (now part of Eversource, a Massachusetts utility, is a typical example (not picking on any one utility) that demonstrates this point. NSTAR gets almost 60% of its residential lifetime electricity savings from lighting at a cost of about $0.04 per kWh saved. Lighting, however, only makes up 20% of total residential program costs, with an average cost of $0.12 per kWh saved.
And even this obscures the scale of lighting, as many of the other “whole home” programs include lighting to get many of their savings. The main reason this occurs is that lighting programs are a lot easier for consumers to adopt because most of the time the “program” is giving away light bulbs for free.
Another way of looking at it is that energy efficiency programs have successfully given away free stuff (slow clap…), but have many more challenges with driving cheap savings via discounts on more expensive items (insulation, HVAC systems, etc.)
So lighting is a really cheap, easy form of energy savings. And that’s not a bad thing!
But it does mean that almost all economic analyses of energy efficiency are heavily weighted towards one technology, and that the remainder are not nearly as cheap when analyzed in a one-dimensional manner.
3. There are lots of other financial benefits from energy efficiency
Policy folks tend to simplify cost-benefits to a single fuel (usually electricity in kWh). And this makes sense from the perspective of a single utility that only delivers that fuel. But the reality is that most people use electricity and a heating fuel (natural gas, heating oil, etc.), and many efficiency improvements impact both of these fuels.
So the apples-to-apples comparison of the cost of energy efficiency to other fuels is the lifetime energy savings compared to the cost of a project.
If you improve your home by installing new insulation, sealing air leaks and installing a new Nest thermostat, it might cost $5,000, with $300 of electric savings per year and $700 of heating oil savings per year. That could mean electric savings effectively cost 14 cents per kWh and heating oil savings cost $2.50 per gallon.
There are also other utility benefits from reducing load (particularly peak load) that are quantified as an "avoided cost of energy" (e.g. $0.07 per kWh saved). Utilities use these calculations to determine what rebates and incentives are offered, which can buy down a project from $5,000 to $4,000, for example.
Unfortunately, these avoided costs are not passed on transparently and simply so consumers rarely receive the right price signals on which improvements will lead to the most grid benefits.
At the end of the day, energy efficiency is still usually cheaper than supply (both from the utility and consumer perspectives), but it is not as cheap as popular mythology.
That said, all that utilities and policymakers need to do is send the right price signals, and simply pay less than it costs to procure energy (i.e. avoided cost of supply). That doesn’t require all sort of crazy program structures, but rather simple negawatt incentives tied to actual, metered savings.
And even in the cases where energy efficiency is not cheaper for consumers, there are plenty of other good reasons to make energy-saving home improvements. And they will be more likely to make them if they receive the right price signals from policymakers via simple mechanisms tied to actual savings.
But if we want to have an intelligent conversation on the subject and create rational public policy, everyone needs to start making apples-to-apples comparisons to other energy sources rather than just cite old studies that reflect the economics of subsidies to a single technology and a single fuel.
A (free) home energy assessment might save your life
We here at Sealed are all about guaranteeing your energy savings. However, did you know that a home energy assessment could also save your life?****
Before I go any further, a little introduction. I’m working with Sealed to spread the word about home energy efficiency while studying energy policy and management at Columbia University. And coming from Northern Europe (Latvia), I know how to appreciate a warm, cozy home that does not waste money.
Prior to coming to New York, I worked at an oil and gas publication and roamed around the earth with my suitcase for three years. My favorite spot? Lagos, Nigeria, my biggest love-hate relationship. You just cannot stay neutral towards Africa’s largest city.
One of the things that struck me while working with Sealed is how energy assessments have a big safety element in addition to a focus on lowering energy bills and improving comfort.
During a recent home energy assessment in Islip, NY, one of our customers complained about draft in the living room downstairs. Dan Hochman, our home energy advisor, checked the house thoroughly and discovered leaks around the windows as well as poor insulation in one of the walls.
Pretty standard so far.
But while doing the usual oil boiler check-up, Dan discovered that its flue gas contained dangerously high levels of a potential killer: carbon monoxide.
Under normal circumstances, burning carbon-based fuels such as oil, natural gas or wood will create carbon dioxide, or CO2. However, when oxygen is in short supply, each carbon atom bonds with only one oxygen atom, creating carbon monoxide, or CO. These kinds of conditions can occur in closed spaces, such as car engines or, in our case, boilers used for heating our homes.
Carbon monoxide is often called the “silent killer”. Odorless, tasteless, colorless, and only slightly heavier than air, CO can creep up on unsuspecting victims without anyone noticing. When inhaled, the gas molecules bind themselves to red blood cells, preventing them from delivering oxygen around the body, causing suffocation.
“Most people assume their boiler is safe,” says Dan. “However, about 5-10% of homes have dangerous levels of CO that can be really harmful. This is below the amount that will trigger most carbon monoxide detectors, but it is enough to potentially cause serious health issues.”
Indeed, CO is no joke. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 400 people in the U.S. die annually from CO poisoning, and in 2011, heating systems were the second highest cause of CO-related death.
Prolonged exposure to the gas can damage the central nervous system, which can often result in permanent pathologies in the long term, including changes in memory, brain function, and even behavior.
Even doses as low as 35 ppm (parts per million) are toxic to humans. Dan says he often encounters issues in homes that don’t have their boiler regularly services.
“If your boiler is not regularly serviced, it makes sense to have a free home energy assessment,” says Dan. “We will check how well the boiler is drafting and combusting and suggest ways to address any health and safety issues issues.”
So there you go. Get your home energy assessment. It might just save your life.
Hello, loyal readers! I’m Andrew McCarthy, and I oversee all of our customer-facing operations at Sealed. As this is my first blog post, a personal introduction is in order.
Besides being handsome, charming, single, and modest, here are a few fun facts about me (all related to music coincidentally):
I once drove a member of the Wu Tang Clan to the airport
I not-so-secretly wish I were / think that I am Bruce Springsteen (maybe this is why I’m single)
I was part of a Blink 182 cover band in junior high called "8 Stories High"
Prior to Sealed, I taught 7th-grade math in New Orleans (hence my picture above...) and worked with a non-profit in Tanzania. Compared to that, home energy improvements are a piece of cake!
I joined the Sealed team in large part because I believe fervently in the value of Sealed’s energy savings guarantee. I have had the privilege of working with our customers that also see this value. In fact, the most common question we get is "Why wouldn't I want my savings guaranteed"?
Once customers agree that guaranteed savings are better than estimated savings we naturally get the question, “How exactly do you do that?”
Usually, it's a bit more blunt than that. We get a lot of questions like this:
"Wait a second, how exactly do you make money?"
"What's the catch?"
"Why do you pay the bills for me?"
So here's how it works (it's actually pretty simple):
Sealed makes a savings guarantee based on your home, your past energy usage, and your home energy project
Based on the data we collect during your home energy assessment, we determine the percentage reduction in energy usage that will result from your home energy project.
We provide you with a simple presentation and a friendly contract, then guarantee your savings for the next 15 years. The savings we guarantee are less than we expect you to save on average (which is how we make money).
Sealed becomes your billing agent, paying all of your energy bills on your behalf
By paying your energy bills on your behalf, we assume 100% of the risk that your project saves as much energy as we guaranteed. If your project doesn’t save as much energy as we guaranteed, we pay the difference.
Beyond that, it means you never have to deal with your utility company’s customer service staff ever again, except during storms (I’ll expound on the joys of utility customer service in a future post).
You pay a single Sealed bill each month
Every month, we send you a single, simple bill that accounts for all of your energy usage. Our bill is guaranteed to be lower than whatever you would have paid for energy if you hadn’t improved your home.
We lay things out simply for you each month, not only showing you what you owe to Sealed, but also how much money you have saved through your improvements.
To deliver on our promise of savings to you, we bill you fairly. Your bill is based on your past usage, adjusted to that month’s weather. We then discount your bill according to your guaranteed savings (regardless of how much your energy was actually reduced!)
This means that just like a regular utility bill, your heating expenses with Sealed go up in the winter when it's cold (but not as much as it used to!).
We also keep it fair by charging you the current energy price. It is surprisingly a lot of work to figure out exactly how the utility companies calculate their energy prices each month, but we take pride in being experts in utility pricing (more on that at a later date).
With three simple steps, we make it easy for our customers to receive guaranteed savings. There are no complex reimbursement procedures or equipment inspections, just a billing relationship that streamlines and improves the home energy experience for all of our customers.
5 common energy efficiency misconceptions (Dan Hochman)
Hi, my name is Dan Hochman, and I manage our efforts in New York. Prior to joining Sealed, I had the pleasure (and pain) of being the only non-engineer in an energy engineering Master’s program at Carnegie Mellon. I grew up in Manhattan but now rock suburbia on a daily basis (usually with 90s Hip Hop playing in the car).
Most people tell me I’m a 65-year old living in a 25-year old body. My favorite customers discuss interest rate trends as I tell them about the efficiency of their boiler. Jewish grandmothers also love me - I’ve got a bit of Mensch on a Bench thing going on.
Working with Sealed, I have learned a ton about how homes use energy, and common misconceptions that many people have.
A home is everyone’s pride and joy and their single biggest investment. Everyone expects their home to be comfortable and secure, with the lowest possible operating and maintenance costs. Our parents never warned us when we were growing up that the American dream might come with a side order of $4-6,000 in annual utility bills.
Most people know that they could save money and be more comfortable with energy efficiency solutions, but either think their current home is already as efficient as it can be, or believe the wrong things are causing comfort issues and high energy bills.
Below are some of the most common things I hear in the home.
Energy efficiency means lowering my thermostat
Many people thing that energy efficiency requires a behavior change. One customer stopped me as I was walking through a presentation and told me:
“I’ll probably have to change my behavior or lower my thermostat to lower my energy bills, right?”
Freezing to death will obviously lower your energy bills, but that’s not energy efficiency and that’s not our goal. Efficiency improvements like insulation, air sealing, and HVAC upgrades enable you to be more comfortable while using less energy.
Old windows are the real problem
Without fail, more than half of customers bring up discomfort with their windows as the main energy efficiency culprit of the home. They always say
“And my windows are so drafty; I can feel them from my couch!”
It is rarely the case that windows are the priority for replacement when trying to reduce energy waste in the home. Most of the time, they simply need to be air sealed to reduce or eliminate drafts.
In most houses, windows make up 10-20% of the surface area exposed to the elements and they are some of the most expensive items per square foot to replace. You can insulate and air seal a massive attic for the same cost as it takes to replace a few square feet of windows.
Attic fans save me money on energy bills
One customer stopped me mid-sentence as I was explaining the benefits of house fan removal. He told me:
“My whole-house (attic fan) is a Godsend during the summer. I’m not sure it’s a great idea to remove it.”
At one point in time, attic fans were useful for quickly cooling down homes in the sweltering summer. This was before homes were built with proper insulation and air conditioning. A house fan is essentially a gaping hole in your home.
And while it may save you some electricity in the summertime, it wasting a ton of energy in the winter because heat and air escape right through that fan vent. It almost always pays more to remove the house fan and properly insulate your attic. Your house will keep cool in the summer with light use of window or central AC units.
Many homeowners who I talk to attempt to cover their house fan vents with a plastic sheath or cloth during the colder months. This may mitigate some comfort issues around the vent, but it will not stop you from hemorrhaging money on your heating bills.
6 inches of insulation is plenty
I often hear from homeowners:
“My fiberglass insulation is 6 inches high, so I don’t need more insulation, right? How much more could you possibly fit?”
Winter is hard! If you live in a cold area, six inches of insulation means you are still letting plenty of warm air escape, which means you are cold and wasting money. Plus, all insulation isn’t created equal. It matter whether the insulation is even and if there are gaps. Even minor gaps in the insulation can significantly increase the amount of heat escaping.
The insulation in your attic should evenly blanket the attic flat and rise as much as 15” above the attic flat. Most of the time, the best thing you can do is add cellulose insulation above your existing fiberglass insulation. Cellulose is blown in and fills in crevices and gaps that the fiberglass insulation leaves behind.
In addition, homes often lack proper air sealing in the top-plates (gap between your wall and the wood frame of the house), open soffits (holes in the attic usually used to run plumbing), and high hats (ceiling light fixtures).
New wall insulation is incompatible with replacing siding in the future
Sometimes a customer will caution me that wall insulation isn't an option. They tell me:
“We can’t install wall insulation because we are planning on replacing siding”
In most cases, siding is installed on top of a separate layer of sheathing. Because the insulation sits between the sheetrock and the sheathing, it should have no bearing on when and whether you replace your siding.
Want to give your house a new look with different siding? Go ahead and do it! Don’t let that interfere with insulating your walls.
If you want to learn more about how your home uses energy, and how you can lower your energy bills (guaranteed), visit sealed.com or give us a call at 1-844-4SEALED
The 3 biggest energy efficiency myths (Harrison Pao)
Hi, my name is Harrison and I’m a Junior at Columbia University. For the past six months, I have worked as an intern at Sealed, speaking with hundreds of homeowners that are interested in energy efficiency.
Based on these conversations, I have learned that many homeowners want to make their homes energy efficient to increase the comfort, health and value of their home as well as to lower their energy bills.
But I have also learned many of the misguided reasons why some people decide not to improve the energy efficiency of their home. These are three common misconceptions about home energy efficiency.
1: It’s too expensive!
“These improvements are just too expensive. I want to make my home more energy efficient, but I just don’t have the money”
Perhaps the most common misconception about making your home more energy efficient is that it will be too expensive. However, energy efficiency can actually save you money instead of costing you anything!
There are rebates and financing programs available in almost every state. The rebates lower the total cost of the project, and financing means there are no upfront costs. This means you have a loan payment that pays off your project over time.
But unlike any other home improvements, energy efficiency also saves you money by lowering your energy bills. These savings help pay for most (if not all) of the loan payment, making the project much cheaper than the sticker price, and in many cases negative!
I remember speaking to one particular homeowner, Jim, who was interested in improving the energy efficiency of his home. He’d been meaning to fix his daughter’s room which was always cold in the winter, but couldn’t spend too much money right now because he’s already paying a mortgage and college tuition.
However, Jim became excited when I explained why these improvements can be affordable. He especially liked that lowering his bills could result in a negative project cost, but was still a bit skeptical that these improvements would actually lower his bills.
2: What if I don’t actually save?
“But what if I make these improvements to my home but they actually don’t save me any money? Why should I trust these improvements?”
Previously, this was not just a misconception, it was a real problem. Any contractor can do work on your home and estimate your energy savings, say 20% on your heating bills. But since this is only an estimate, there is still the risk that these savings will not pan out.
Sealed is unique because it removes this risk by guaranteeing that you will save on your bills. If Sealed guarantees that you will save 20% on your heating bills, but in actuality you only save 10%, Sealed will pay that difference so you save the full 20%. Sealed takes the risk for you so that you can lower your bills with the comfort of a guarantee.
When I explained how Sealed guarantees savings to Jim, he recognized that by making his home more energy efficient he could make his home warm for the winter while ending up with extra money in his pocket.
3: It’s a hassle!
“I don’t have the time and energy to make my home efficient. Plus, I just can’t deal with a mess in my home right now”
Trying to fix up your home really is often a hassle. Nobody wants to search for quotes and advice from different contractors or deal with a mess in their home for weeks.
But the great news about energy efficiency is that most of the improvements are quick and non-intrusive to install. Insulation, air sealing and HVAC replacement are all done in the nooks and crannies of your home so nothing is disrupted in your living areas. And most of the time the work is done in a single day, meaning that there is no lengthy process.
This was another concern of Jim’s. With a full time job and a young family he didn’t have the time to search for a contractor and didn’t want a construction crew disrupting his children. Jim was however very pleased with the work that was done to his home. The improvements were done in a single day so there was no mess, and his daughter’s room became more comfortable the very next day!
The bottom line is that, despite popular misconceptions, energy efficiency improvements are affordable, reliable and easy.
Please visit sealed.com to learn more about how you can make your home energy efficient today!
Yesterday, the EPA released their long-awaited carbon rules that aim to reduce US carbon by 30% by 2030.
While there will of course be plenty of partisan bickering about jobs versus our burning planet, the more interesting issue question is how states will meet the carbon mandates given the flexibility in the EPA draft regulations.
In most states, energy efficiency will be the cheapest method to reduce carbon emissions. But these EPA rules should be a catalyst to dramatically scale energy efficiency via #OpenEnergyMarkets.
Our friends at EnergySavvy made some great points in a blog post yesterday:
Even though the U.S. is on a positive energy efficiency trend – annualized electricity savings are up 82% in 5 years and utility programs saved 126 Terawatt hours in 2012 – the rate of spending has outstripped savings. Spending was up 155% over the same period to $6.9B in 2012.
This spending is almost 100% government and utility run "programs" that involve a considerable amount of planning, bureaucracy and inefficiency. To scale energy efficiency, therefore, the paradigm of command-and-control energy efficiency "programs" must end, and "program administrators" need to transition to "market administrators".
This starts with #OpenEnergyData, but also requires #OpenEnergyMarkets, which can be generally defined as the ability for third parties to get paid for generating verified energy savings.
These markets exist in a fairly robust manner in the Commercial & Industrial demand response space, with companies like EnerNoc managing load reductions for large manufacturing plants and businesses, getting paid by Independent System Operators like PJM that are in charge of managing the grid.
In the residential sector, there are a few models of how #OpenEnergyMarkets can be created and structured. Perhaps the most advanced market is the California ISO, which has created rules enabling third parties to monetize peak demand reductions from residential homes. So far the most innovative company taking advantage of this market is Ohmconnect, which frames their business model this way:
But while the CAISO market is a great model for residential peak demand reductions, it does not yet cover energy efficiency, or the reduction of energy regardless of time.
The CT Class III REC market provides one example of an energy efficiency market in action. In this market, third parties can apply to the CT Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to get a project certified, and eligible to sell credits to electricity suppliers that are required to buy these RECs. Unfortunately, it is difficult for residential projects not run by the utility companies to qualify, as only 4/35 approved projects are residential, and those are all for lighting.
Connecticut's challenge is an ad-hoc process for measurement & verification (M&V), which puts pressure on the regulators to only approve things that have already been approved in previous processes. This makes things easier for regulators, but much harder for innovative companies trying to create new models for saving energy.
Illinois, on the other hand, represents perhaps the most mature energy efficiency market in the country today. Despite relatively low energy prices, Illinois enables third parties to bid energy efficiency programs to the Illinois Power Agency (IPA), which much be accepted as long as they are cost-effective. This simple, but powerful rule was embedded in Illinois' 2011 smart grid bill to mandate that the IPA procure:
Cost-effective energy efficiency programs or measures that are incremental to those included in energy efficiency and demand response plans
There are now more third-party programs than utility-administered programs for ComEd, the biggest electric utility in the state.
This third-party program structure can eventually turn into #OpenEnergyMarkets if policymakers, regulators and utilities can design transparent protocols for measuring savings that meet the standard the EPA has set:
To reach this standard will require a thoughtful process that leverages the market templates that exist today, a commitment to #OpenEnergyData, and the adoption of a "market creation" mentality that rewards a new generation of companies dedicated to saving energy.
Real environmentalists guarantee home efficiency savings (kidding...kind of)
Here at Sealed we have chosen to address the home energy efficiency sector by guaranteeing savings. There are a lot of reasons for working to reduce homes' energy bills, including feeling good about lowering homeowner costs and creating local, green collar jobs.
But on Earth Day, of course, we focus on how Sealed can help the environment by reducing the amount of fossil fuels we need to burn.
As we think about it, Sealed is addressing the single largest carbon reduction opportunity (energy efficiency), the largest market within that opportunity (single-family homes), and the single largest barrier to scaling that market (confidence in energy savings).
Energy efficiency as a whole represents the single largest carbon reduction opportunity. Based on the most recent McKinsey study, technical energy efficiency represents a 14 gigaton carbon dioxide reduction per year (i.e., a lot).
This represents the single biggest "wedge" to meeting our global carbon reduction goals. The best part of this is that energy efficiency has by far the largest "negative cost," which means that you actually make money by deploying capital to make buildings more energy efficient.
We can also look at the change in investment of energy efficiency compared to the extraction of fossil fuels in the next twenty years. Based on the latest IPCC report (the international organization that organizes all of the climate science), capital going into energy efficiency is going to jump tremendously, while capital in fossil fuel extraction will plummet.
In the United States, it is even more dramatic, with energy efficiency representing over 50% of 2030 carbon reduction potential.
Within the energy efficiency sector, single family homes represent about 50% of the total US energy savings potential.
And as readers of this blog know all too well, confidence in energy savings is the single biggest value for energy efficiency that single-family homeowners want.
So that's why we think Sealed can make a big impact, and one reason why we are all excited to go to work every morning (also the free coffee - thanks WeWork!).
We know we don't have all of the answers, and we certainly know that there are many other pieces of the puzzle, but we are doing our best to help keep our planet safe (and cool).
(This is originally posted on Mike Rogers’ Omstout blog)
Part 3: To guarantee savings you need #OpenEnergyData
Savings guarantees are important, but are very hard to implement in a manner that is impactful. So where does that leave the home performance industry, policymakers and other stakeholders?
Luckily, there is a lot that can be done to make energy savings guarantees more prevalent and powerful. This starts and ends with data. In order to best guarantee savings, data on homes undertaking home efficiency improvements is needed to quantify actual savings, variance and other aspects of risk. Unfortunately, this data is difficult to obtain, combine and normalize, with various stakeholders holding different pieces of the puzzle.
The first challenge is simply obtaining data related to home performance improvements. Energy usage data is held by utilities, who typically require confidentiality agreements and/or customer authorization. Obtaining energy usage data therefore either entails long, complicated negotiations with utilities or persuading homeowner’s to find and share their utility account information and/or usage history for the purpose of research. This has to be done for all energy companies, including hard to track fuels like heating oil and propane in many cases.
Once energy usage data is collected, home and project characteristics must be matched. Most utilities do not have this data, which is instead held by individual home performance contractors and the software used for home energy assessments. Homeowners themselves usually only receive a report that summarizes the assessment findings, so they can’t directly provide this data.
After pre- and post-improvement energy usage and the home and project characteristics are combined, the data must be normalized by weather and energy prices, as well as scrubbed for obvious data entry or modeling errors. This is a tall order, and not something most individual stakeholders can accomplish in isolation.
Currently, the only stakeholders that ever have regular access to all of this data are evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) consultants, although they often are not able to obtain all of the necessary data to perform a comprehensive analysis. EM&V consultants are also limited by a mandate to evaluate entire programs, including many considerations like free-ridership that are not relevant to individual homeowners or savings guarantees. Most EM&V reports therefore simply show average savings across an entire program, not the variability or other factors.
So as with most things these days, the answer lies in a hashtag: #OpenEnergyData.
More specifically, #OpenEnergyData means multi-stakeholder efforts to aggregate, clean and sort relevant data sets into a master Energy Data Center, a concept first proposed in California. More recently, DOE’s Buildings Performance Database(BPD) and the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) with the Building America Field Data Repository (BAFDR) have taken national leadership on this front.
A screenshot graphing a slice of the data from the DOE Buildings Performance Database
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be the appropriate sense of urgency in allowing access to these data sets. The BPD in particular has a policy of only allowing derivative analysis, not being able to analyze the raw (anonymized) data. You can see Sealed’s comments to the BPD here. The bottom line is they should be asking their data partners to allow the raw data to be shared.
The BAFDR (which will theoretically feed into BPD) looks to also have a ton of promise. NREL has gathered a good amount of data around home performance results, and are starting to use it to test the accuracy of various software tools. But it will be several years until this data can be analyzed by anyone other than the government, a proposition that is unfortunate given the value it can serve in the private market.
In the meantime, each state and utility company has the opportunity to become a leader. The Investor Confidence Project has been working with several leading state organizations to publish open data on clean energy loan performance. These stakeholders can go much farther by publishing actual energy usage and project characteristic data like air leakage numbers (in New York this was FOIA’d about a year ago – see Ted Kidd’s results here).
There are also many local laws (including New York City’s LL86) to mandate energy disclosure for multi-family and commercial buildings. These energy disclosure laws have already led to innovation and catalyzed new energy startups like WegoWise, which can now publish cool charts. Sealed is trying to do its part, working with the Town of Babylon’s Green Homes Program to publish the variance in realization rates.
It is time to bring this level of data transparency to more single-family homes. Sealed is part of the Cleanweb Initiative, and has started a discussion and draft#OpenEnergyData manifesto. Please check it out, give feedback (google doc so you can edit / comment directly), and let us know if you would be willing to sign the manifesto.
The bottom line is guarantees matter, they are difficult to implement, and we must all work together to build the data sets necessary to create more transparency and trust with homeowners and other stakeholders.
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