The Department of Energy Website is a wealth of knowledge for resource about efforts to conserve energy and make US residential, commercial, and industrial buildings more energy efficient. Some of the DOE initiatives these initiatives include:
The Better Buildings Neighborhood Program is working with hundreds of neighborhoods across the country to promote energy efficiency upgrades in homes and buildings. The partners are making it easier for homes and business owners to access energy efficiency experts and complete building upgrades while supporting a growing energy improvement workforce.
With the Better Buildings Challenge, sixty major companies, universities, hospitals, retailers and cities and states are stepping up to upgrade 1.6 billion s.f. of commercial and industrial space by 2020. Organizations have committed nearly $2 billion of private capital to finance energy efficient projects.
The Home Energy Score pilot program offers homeowners straightforward, reliable information about their homes’ energy efficiency. Under this voluntary program, trained and certified contractors use a standardized assessment tool developed by DOE to quickly evaluate a home and generate useful, actionable information for homeowners or prospective home buyers.
A developing voluntary Workforce Guidelines for Home Energy Upgrades, includes a comprehensive set of guidelines for workers in the residential energy efficiency industry. The guidelines help build and expand the skills of the workforce, ensuring the quality of the work performed, while laying the foundation for a more robust worker certification and training program nationwide.
To improve access to financing, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has launched the PowerSaver pilot program, partnering with eighteen national, regional and local lenders to offer qualified borrowers low-cost loans to make energy-saving improvements to their homes. These PowerSaver loans offer homeowners up to $25,000 to make energy-efficient improvements of their choice, including the installation of insulation, duct sealing, replacement doors and windows, HVAC systems, water heaters, solar panels, and geothermal systems.
DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy invests in clean energy technologies that strengthen the economy, protect the environment, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Learn more about DOE’s effort to enable low-income families to permanently reduce their energy bills by making their homes more energy efficient.
For more information: www.energy.gov
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