Mandatory energy audits on homes for sale: Experience in CA, TX, Canada?

[hdrider_chgo]

There has been talk of requiring mandatory energy audits on homes or buildings for sale in Chicago. (Personally, I think this seems like an excellent idea).

Proposal described here:
http://www.greeneconomychicago.com./...deas&Itemid=55

The Wall Street Journal last week ran an article that claimed San Francisco and Berkeley have had such ordinances in place for years, Austin, TX just started requiring this, and the Canadian province of Ontario just passed similar ordinance.

Anyone in those locations have any experience, thoughts, or opinions on this, especially in regards to effectiveness? Any links to the ordinances, news stories, forms or related data?

[Dick Seibert]

Yes the programs have been going on here for some time, the problems are due to every con-man around jumping into it buying blower door units and infrared cameras, the bulk insulation guys fighting the radiant barrier guys and vice versa, all wanting to put cheap windows in. A former employee of mine went to work for one and was taught how to defraud people into buying plastic windows, radiant barriers draped in the attics, then fake a smoking candle test to show the owners that he had done some good. I convinced him to quit and not be involved with the fraud.

Berkeley just had a huge fight attempting to move the program beyond sale to the point of making everybody weatherize their homes now, at an estimated cost of $33,000 to $55,000 per home, it was finally voted doen after the people lined up with picket signs in front of city hall.

The plan, which the City Council is slated to approve Tuesday, aims to bring the city into compliance with Measure G, a 2006 initiative requiring the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Under the proposal, all homeowners in Berkeley will be required to hire an energy auditor to inspect their home for leaks and inefficiencies.

Each home will receive a rating, similar to a car's gas- mileage rating. The owner will be required to improve the home's energy efficiency to meet city standards.

Within the next few years, the city is likely to mandate that all homes meet strict energy standards. In many cases this would mean new double-paned windows, insulation in the attic, walls and floors, a new white roof that reflects heat, a forced-air furnace and high-efficiency appliances.

The cost: upward of $33,800.

No deadlines or specific standards have been set yet. But the city's goal is for all of Berkeley's 23,000 homes and 25,000 duplexes and apartment units to reduce energy use by 35 percent by 2020.

In some cases, the standards can be met relatively inexpensively, Romain said. Caulking, sealing, insulation and new appliances - an investment of under $10,000 - can reduce energy use by more than 25 percent.¹

I want to emphasize that this plan was met with a tremendous outcry and was tabled by the City Council.

The local government agencies are now taking over and doing it themselves since Obama stimulus money is available, keeping the money in the government, keeping building inspectors busy while hiring unemployed cheap labor to do the work, the ultimate in socialism, the government weatherizing buildings using free money from the government, and note the number one reason for the program in your Chicago site: "In the short term, this requirement could: - Create local jobs for building inspectors and home energy auditors."

County agencies said they expect to begin hiring as early as late April. That timeframe would be “really, really early” for stimulus funding that involves construction and hiring new workers, according to Steve Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

NASCSP estimates that California will receive $192 million over two years, pumping about half a billion dollars into the state’s economy through jobs, suppliers, and other related spending.

While the Department of Energy has not yet released final numbers for each state’s take, local organizations have already begun planning based on past allocations. The head of Contra Costa County’s program, Michael Angelo Silva, anticipates receiving $3 million from the stimulus.

He has already calculated that he will need to hire a dozen more staff, purchase and supply five more vans, and double his warehouse space.

Silva said he should have no trouble finding qualified applicants. When he posted a job opening in January, he ran one classified ad for one day in one local paper. Fifty people responded, many with decades of residential building experience.²

An interesting offshoot of both the home audits and the Berkeley plan is Obama's head of the Department of Energy and former Berkeley resident, Stephen Chu, is pushing for all white roofs nationwide, one of the objections to the Berkeley plan is people wanted dark roods to absorb heat rather than the mandated white roofs to reflect heat, Berkeley is a cold town getting a lot of the fog off the Bay.

That was suggested in a recent talk by Energy Secretary Steven Chu - although, because he was speaking to Nobel laureates, he did not mention the ABBA musical set in the Greek Islands. He said that global warming could be slowed by a low-tech idea that has nothing to do with coal plants or solar panels: white roofs.

Making roofs white "changes the reflectivity ... of the Earth, so the sunlight comes in, it's reflected back into space," Chu said. "This is something very simple that we can do immediately," he said later.³

¹ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MNLE174GD5.DTL
² http://510report.org/2009/03/11/weat...-the-bay-area/
³ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MN8L186R3F.DTL

[R Factor]

I just had a conversation about the Obama money coming into the Energy programs. It seems that the possiblity exists that the labor to install energy saving measures may be some how tied to the Davis Bacon wage scale. STAY TUNED!!

The idea of testing existing home to be sold is a good one if the people doingthe testing are certified to do so. In NY there is BPI certifications which I have and the standards are in place for this. Real estate brokers etc. are going to have a tough time with this as the sale of a home that falls through for energy reasons is a big problem in any economy. I still believe that this is a must. I have been speaking to a couple of banks in my area to have this part of the loan process.

[ThingOfBeauty]

Our county looked into this and realized there were not enough auditors. Audit quality is a serious issue--currently RESNET and BPI both provide a degree of quality control when audits are done under their umbrellas, but you can also be BPI certified and do a "non-BPI audit" that will never be QC'd.
So, the county decided to require disclosure of 1 years' utility bills. In many ways this is as useful as an audit, in other ways it comes up quite short.
The county also instituted a really cool loan program. Payments are made via the property tax bill and the loan & payments stay with the house when it's sold. It's a 15-year loan term for energy improvements certified by an auditor to have a seven-year payback--therefore the loan payments are lower than the energy savings, you have more money in your pocket every month if you do the improvements than if you don't.
Time will tell how many people undertake the audit/improvement process, and what hassles/problems develop, but overall it's a pretty good idea.

Now that weatherization money is deployed under similar guidelines, I think it makes more sense than some of the projects and spending our government is doing. We don't really need the 'developer's outer beltway' road theyr'e blowing $3 billion on here, and it will never 'pay back' the investment. But houses are so leaky and underinsulated that those improvements will actually put money in society's pocket, from day one and for decades to come. Too bad for the energy companies who won't pocket that money, I think it's better off in the hands of the people who aren't paying the energy bills anymore, and the construction guys who are unemployed now but will have jobs for a while.

[worthy]

Yep, our Provincial government led by a Premier who sees and talks to us all as children, has made energy audits mandatory. Unless the buyer doesn't insist on it. There's also a C$150 grant toward the estimated C$300 cost, part of the C$253 million energy savings rebate programme over this year and next.

The Feds are also throwing in C$3 billion in Home Renovation Tax Credits, a "stimulus" programme that gives you a 15% grant of the amounts spent between C$1k-C$10k for just about anything you do to your home up to a C$10K maximum. (The swimming pool I'm putting in qualifies for the C$1,350 max.)

What a bonanza for all the renovation hucksters!

I have seen many perfectly good double-pane windows removed and replaced with the cheapest non E-coated, non-filled windows you could imagine. Exactly the subs I avoid are doing a bang-up business.

[stamcon]

Here's a link for SF's pamphlet about the energy conservation ordinance.
http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploaded...ONSERV_ORD.pdf

steve

[Greg From K/W]

Sorry guys I just saw this thread.

up here in Ontario there are agencies that prevent companies from doing the testing and the upgrade work. They are not allowed as its a conflict of interest. For instance I had my home tested by an agency called REEP. Regional Energy Efficiency Program.

http://www.reepwaterlooregion.ca/

They are not allowed to even recommend installers though the guy I had come out did. Should have ran the other way from that guy. They do give you a list of installers that are licensed and qualified to do the work other than that its up to you. This is more for home upgrades in efficiency rather than selling though. The selling part has been brought into motion but hasn't been past in to law yet as far as I know. Not sure on that. Our provincial government and federal will each pay us a portion of our costs in rebates 50 / 50. Not a bad deal

[worthy]

The Green Energy Act 2009 received Royal assent on May 14.

[dave_k]

They tried these schemes before after oil crisis in the 70's they didn't work then, they won't work now. I think they should put money into programs to educate builders like r-2000 only extend it to retrofit and renovation contractors. Teach real professionals how to tighten up a house and add insulation without getting rot and mold problems and how to upgrade mech systems to go along with it. Maybe increase the federal renovation tax credit with matching provincial funds. Energy audits are a scam.

[Dick Seibert]

Teach real professionals how to tighten up a house and add insulation without getting rot and mold problems and how to upgrade mech systems to go along with it.

You said it all right there, during our last energy efficiency craze with utility rebates the damage done was terrible, I see the same thing starting all over again and mold is a much bigger legal issue now that it was before. Pumping "rat's nest" insulation into our typical walls like these is insane.

This is pure Keynesian economics, throwing money down abandoned gold shafts to put people to work digging for it didn't work in the 30s and it won't work now.

[dave_k]

You said it all right there, during our last energy efficiency craze with utility rebates the damage done was terrible, I see the same thing starting all over again and mold is a much bigger legal issue now that it was before.

hell yea. in the 70 they'd blow insulation into the walls and a year later the paint would peel off then a year or two after that the windows have rotted out.

[Greg From K/W]

Um Worthy it was stated that it was mandatory to have these tests done before selling a home. That is what the original post said. It in fact is not law here in Ontario yet. I see nothing in the website that says it is mandatory to have this testing done in order to sell a house. Personally I think its a great idea. If I spend more to make my home more efficient then why shouldn't I be able to ask higher price?

[dave_k]

If I spend more to make my home more efficient then why shouldn't I be able to ask higher price?

true but why do you need a 3rd party telling you what to do. i had an energy audit done before adding to my house last year. i needed it to get a rebate. they advised me to insulate exterior walls without upgrading the air barrier. actually there is no air barrier it's 125 year old house. i paid $300 for that kind of advise

[Unforgiven]

Supposedly the new Waxman-Markey bill has a provision that would require all homes being re-sold to be inspected by some kind of government agent to determine it's energy efficiency. Then again, it's like 1500 pages, so I'm sure there are all kinds of odd things in there that would never work except on paper.

[Pete Engle]

In NJ, there is a bill pending that would make an energy audit a mandatory part of every pre-purchase home inspection. This is our legislature's attempt to backdoor energy audits without making it seem like gov't intervention. Since home inspections are voluntary, the audits would be, too.

We've pointed out a number of issues with this approach, and here's a few:
-There's no definition in the law of what constitutes an "energy audit." Depending on the eventual regulations, it could be anything from one of the checklist type audits done for free by the local utilities to a full-blown test with blower doors, duct blasters and IR cameras. Obviously, the cost would be different depending on flavor.
-Home inspections are already pretty pricey for most home buyers. Adding a full-blown energy audit could easily double the cost of the inspection, maybe more. This will chase many low-income buyers away from the entire inspection process and arguably, these are the buyers who most need the advice.
-Energy audits are worthless unless the buyer is very motivated to make changes and has the money to do so. This doesn't describe most home buyers, who spend every last penny just to get in the door. Even for a motivated homeowner, audits can be pretty worthless (the advice above to add insulation without discussing air barriers)

So far, the economy is keeping this bill dormant. Our legislators are smart enough to realize that passing legislation that increases the cost of home purchases is a bad idea right now. But things can move surprisingly fast when nobody is looking. I would not be terribly surprised to read the paper tomorrow and see that it was signed by our Governor today.