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Build It Green has an online tool that you can use to learn tips on how to make your home more resource-friendly and determine if your home is ready to get the GreenPoint Rated certification. Have you already certified your home? Pay it forward and share the survey with a friend. A certified green home provides assurances to you and potential buyers that your home is truly healthier, more energy efficient and comfortable. Also, studies show that if you’re selling your home, you can get up to 9% more on the sales price with a green label like GreenPoint Rated.
Start the year with a simple, do-it-yourself, low-cost project. Take inventory of incandescent and halogen bulbs in your home, and replace them with LEDs. This high-efficiency lighting will drastically reduce energy consumption and energy costs associated with lighting. This upgrade comes with environmental benefits. A smaller energy demand for your home results in less green house gas emissions for homes not yet net-zero. It’s easier than ever in today’s world, with some utilities giving them away. Here is a helpful resource to guide you as you make the switch (https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/lightbulbguide.pdf).
Insulation projects can initially seem daunting, but the payback is huge. To ensure it’s done right the first time, hire a home performance contractor, GreenPoint Rater, or HERS Rater to do a home performance energy audit. They will run diagnostics to determine where your home is losing energy and provide you with recommendations to help meet higher efficiency standards to help make sure you’re more comfortable in your home and saving money on your heating and cooling bills. The process takes typically a few hours for the testing, and one to two days for the insulation work. If you’re considering solar, do this step first! Also, to further reduce your greenhouse gas footprint, ask your contractor to use natural materials and avoid spray foams.
Insulation projects can initially seem daunting, but the payback is huge. To ensure it’s done right the first time, hire a home performance contractor, GreenPoint Rater, or HERS Rater to do a home performance energy audit. They will run diagnostics to determine where your home is losing energy and provide you with recommendations to help meet higher efficiency standards to help make sure you’re more comfortable in your home and saving money on your heating and cooling bills. The process takes typically a few hours for the testing, and one to two days for the insulation work. If you’re considering solar, do this step first! Also, to further reduce your greenhouse gas footprint, ask your contractor to use natural materials and avoid spray foams.
This resolution goes beyond the typical green building realm, but those of you with built in recycling and composting centers can further reduce waste by eating less meat. If you don’t have one installed yet, feel free to also add this to your list of resolutions! According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if we all work towards a more plant-based diet those personal changes, could, when combined globally, reduce global CO2 emissions by between three and eight billion tons per year.
Hope many of you will try and do one or more of them. What other ones do you think should be on the list? Please email me a [email protected] and share your thoughts with me.
Happy New Year!
Christopher Becker
Interim Executive Director
Build It Green
GreenPoint Rated is a credible and accessible pathway to prove homes are built to trusted environmental standards.
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