by Karl Brooks, U.S. EPA Region 7 administrator
Families are always looking for common sense ways to reduce wasted spending. That’s why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently launched its Energy Star Home Adviser — an online tool to help consumers save money and improve their homes’ energy efficiency through recommended home-improvement projects.
The Energy Star Home Adviser guides homeowners through a do-it-yourself energy assessment to create home profiles of their current energy use. The adviser then provides recommended projects and can help the user prioritize them into to-do lists to improve the home’s energy efficiency. Projects vary from quick actions like lighting and appliance upgrades, to more intensive ones like sealing air leaks and adding insulation.
Simple actions, like upgrading a bathroom showerhead to one with a WaterSense label, can save thousands of gallons of water a year and days of energy costs, which translate to big savings for our pocketbooks and the environment.
Over the last 22 years, with help from EPA’s Energy Star, American families and businesses have saved $300 billion dollars on utility bills and prevented more than 2.1 billion metric tons of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. If every home in this country replaced existing showerheads with WaterSense labeled models, we would save more than 260 billion gallons of water and nearly $5.1 billion in water and energy costs annually.
So, visit http://www.energystar.gov/homeadvisor today and create a home profile.
EPA programs like Energy Star and WaterSense http://www.epa.gov/watersense help cut harmful greenhouse gas pollution, putting us on a path to a cleaner, healthier planet that our children will be proud to inherit. You can help by joining us in making smart choices at home—saving you money while protecting our health and the environment.
Learn more about Energy Star Home Advisor: www.energystar.gov/homeadvisor.
