Many American’s minds are on getting their home winter-ready as cold weather is approaching. A sure way to make sure your home is as weatherized and efficient as possible is to retrofit your home to the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® program (HPwES) standards. In fact, just in time for Old Man Winter, in Delaware the one millionth American home has just been upgraded with energy efficiency improvements through the HPwES.
HPwES is a national home improvement program administered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve the energy efficiency of single-family and low-rise multifamily homes. It has helped American homeowners and renters save $7.7 billion on their energy bills and cut carbon emissions equivalent to a year’s worth of 11 coal-fired power plants since it began in 2001.
HPwES connects homeowners with a network of over 1,300 home performance contractors and utility and nonprofit energy efficiency program administrators to make upgrades that save energy and improve the comfort, health, and safety of their homes.
Sponsors and their networks of contractors follow a proven "whole-house" approach set by DOE guidelines to assess and improve home energy use with the most comprehensive and economically feasible upgrades, such as sealing leaks to control outside air from entering the home, adding insulation, or installing a new clean heating and cooling system like an ENERGY STAR®-certified heat pump. Additional savings can be achieved by installing rooftop solar panels, EV chargers, or connected home products like smart thermostats that can monitor and adjust energy use.
The EPA has also launched new residential sector partnerships to more quickly bring efficiency and electrification retrofits to households through its ENERGY STAR Home Upgrade Program. With rebates for home weatherization and electrification in President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, these interagency efforts will provide consumers, utility programs and energy efficiency service providers with greater access to residential energy efficiency solutions and technologies to save energy and lower their energy costs.
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