from the ground up - The Tyee

How Many ‘Miles-per-Gallon’ Does Your House Get?Home buyers deserve labels revealing future utility costs, say efficient buildingadvocates.By Colleen KimmettArticle first published on September 20, 2011 by TheTyee.ca.Most people wouldn’t buy a car without knowingits fuel economy, or sign up for a cell phone planwithout comparing service rates. Yet when it comesto one of life’s biggest investments -- buying ahouse -- few stop to question how much it will endup costing them to operate that house in the longterm.Ideally, a thorough energy audit of your prospectivenew home would tell you not only how much it willcost to keep cool or warm, but also what you mayneed to do to improve that performance, how much itwill cost, and where to find the help you need.Government and climate advocates would also likeit made easier to compare the average utility bill andgreenhouse gas emissions of one house to those ofanother. They believe it’s the secret to turning goodintentions into action—a key part a green buildingstrategy.“Any [home energy] audit that happens via a utilityor conservation program has one goal in mind: theability to translate the audit into an actual retrofit,”explains Sean Penrith, executive director of the EarthAdvantage Institute, a non-profit green building centrebased in Portland. “Being able to communicate informationabout a home’s energy [use] is key to gettingpeople to change,” he says.Yet that information can be surprisingly hard to find-- or figure out when you do. Existing home energyrating systems have been criticized for being toocomplicated and unwieldy for the average person tomake sense of, and have so far had little impact on theYou check the label at the grocery store, why not buying ahouse?housing market.HES and HERS energy ratings: apples and oranges?It’s no new idea. In fact, there’s already a wholealphabet of rating systems out there: the EUI (EnergyUse Index), HERS (Home Energy Rating System)Index, HES (Home Energy Score), the EPS (EnergyPerformance Score), and the ERS (EnerGuide RatingSystem), to name only a few.The two most widely adopted in North America areHERS (which is used in the United States to deter-82