But what about the average homeowner who just wants to know how much she’s spending each month on energy? Does she need to know what a Btu is, or be a Microsoft Excel junkie, or actually read her utility bills (perish the thought!)? The answer is no, thanks to sophisticated online platforms that do all the work for you, and let you compare your usage against that of comparable homes.  Whether you are an energy geek or an energy dummy, there is an energy tracking tool that is right for you.  Here are a few I’ve found helpful.

MyEnergy is a free tool that was designed precisely with the average homeowner.  To set up your account you need to enter basic information about your home, including your utility account information.  MyEnergy will then retrieve your energy usage (and water if you have an online water account, which I don’t) and display it on your personal dashboard.  The dashboard also automatically compares your usage to nearby homes.

Another cool feature of MyEnergy is that it allows you to form and join energy groups.  There is a group for most states as well as some more local groups.  If you live in Newton, MA you can join the Newton Eco-Project group, a community group working to helping Newton residents make their homes more comfortable, energy efficient and affordable.   MyEnergy also provide tips to help you reduce your usage, which you may find helpful especially if you’re an energy conservation newbie.

My electricity use dashboard

Your electricity provider may also offer free tracking tools.  Nstar, which is my provider, is currently offering a smart energy pilot program.  Participating homes receive a counter-top display as well as access to an online dashboard.  The counter-top home screen highlights daily use, comparing the current day’s usage to the previous day.  The online dashboard displays monthly, weekly and daily use.  It also compares your home’s usage against similar homes that are also part of the pilot.  Nstar requires that all participating homes be subject to time-of-day pricing, which means that you are charged two different rates: a lower rate for usage during off-peak hours, and a higher rate for usage during peak hours (In the winter peak hours are weekdays from 4-9pm.  In the summer peak hours are 1-5pm).  Sound interesting? Click here to sign up.

Wegowise is on online platform designed for multi-family property owners, but it also works great single-family homeowners who tend more towards the geek-side of energy awareness.  Similar to MyEnergy, Wegowise will retrieve your usage data directly from your utility providers and display it on a personalized dashboard.  Wegowise also supports information sharing, but it does so a little bit differently than MyEnergy:  the sharing is done one-to-one between account holders rather than in groups.  In addition, Wegowise offers more sophisticated analytical tools than MyEnergy does.  For example, it can calculate your energy use/square foot as well as your energy use/bedroom.  The growing geek in me loves Wegowise because it allows me to drill down into the nuances of energy usage.  It isn’t for everyone, though, in part because it costs $5/month if you want to share your data and/or if you want to track more than one property.

Are you using one of these tools? Is there another tool you are using? Please share your experience!

In terms of basic functionality, WegoWise is very similar to MyEnergy (also on our resource list): both sites will automatically retrieve your utility usage data from  your utility companies, display this data all together on your personalized dashboard, and compare your usage against that of like properties.  But WegoWise offers users a much more finely grained picture of your building’s energy and water use than MyEnergy does, as well as more sophisticated graphing and reporting tools.

These tools are great not only for property managers with a large portfolio of buildings but also homeowner energy geeks, which I seem to have become (if you download your home’s utility data into an excel spreadsheet every month, then you are an energy geek and would probably love WegoWise).

And if you’re only tracking one building and don’t want to share your data with other users, you get all the tracking and analytical tools for free!  If you own multiple properties and/or wish to share your data, you will need a Wegopro account, starting costs for which are $5/building/month.  In my opinion, though, this is money well-spent.

But not quite. Fortunately, there’s an online resource to help consumers wade through the options and make informed, energy-efficient choices.  The Efficient Windows Collaborative includes a primer on windows, guidance for selecting windows for new construction and remodels, and a tool for calculating and comparing the costs of different window options.  Whether you are shopping for windows or just want to understand how (well) your existing windows work, the site is well worth a visit.

The flooding of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was a huge wake-up call: the effects of climate change were at hand and we would need to redesign and rebuild our vulnerable communities accordingly. White House photo by Paul Morse

At the annual Building Energy Conference earlier this month, Alex Wilson gave a terrific talk on a new framework for sustainable design and green building he calls “resilience”.  Wilson first began to formulate this framework (which he initially termed “passive survivability”) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Since then, resilience–or the ability of buildings and communities remain habitable in the event and aftermath of a natural disaster–has only come to seem more urgent (Does anyone need to be reminded that 2011 was a record breaking year for extreme weather?).

But what does resilience have to do with sustainability?  What does green have to do with emergency planning? Actually, quite a lot it turns out.  Most if not all of the strategies that allow buildings to support life in the event that basic services are disrupted are also strategies that enhance the durability and resource efficiency of buildings–two constitutive ingredients of a “green” or “sustainable” building.

Consider, for example, what happens during the winter in a cold climate when the power goes out.  Even homes that are moderately well-insulated can quickly become uncomfortably cold.  If you have a generator, then you’re set for a couple of days perhaps.  But what if the power stays off for longer?  And let’s say the outage was caused by a blizzard that made the roads impassable.  After a certain point your fuel will run out, you’ll get really cold–and, oh yeah, your pipes will be at risk of freezing.

So what are some strategies for avoiding a situation like this?  There are several (Wilson wrote a great series of blog posts on resilient building strategies for a wide range of emergency situations), but the most fundamental is to air seal and insulate really, really well.  Which–as it turns out–is the first principle of energy efficient construction.

But a homeowner or public official doesn’t have to care about energy efficiency, or even “believe” in climate change, to appreciate the value of superinsulation as protection against power outages during a cold snap.  A major reason why Wilson is so keen to develop and promote the concept of resilience is that you don’t need to have drunk the kool-aid to see its appeal.  You just have to want to make sure your home and your community will be able to withstand a life-threatening emergency.

Wilson, who is as ardent an environmentalist as they come, is betting that he can move sustainable design and green building along farther if he leaves the environment (or at least the environmental argument) out of it.  This is somewhat ironic and disheartening but, I think, realistic.  As maddening as climate change deniers are, they are the symptom of the underlying disease of complacency. We have been fiddling (and shopping) while Rome burns.

Map of Wildfires in the Southwest in 2011. Image credit: NOAA

If there’s a silver lining to the fact that we are now feeling the effects of climate change, perhaps this is it: we will stop fiddling around.   At least I hope so.  Was the damage caused last year by Hurricane Irene, wildfires in the Southwest, etc. severe enough to jolt us out of our complacency?  The cynic in me is not convinced that it was.  Or, perhaps better, the cynic in me doesn’t think that any amount of extreme weather will ever be enough–unless it literally hits home.

But another part of me thinks that resilience can generate broad public support for “green” building standards and techniques.  And, in any case, what’s the alternative to developing and promoting ideas, like resilience, that motivate people to address the environmental crises we are facing?  We have to give people self-interested reasons to do the right thing–even if we wish they would do it simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Resilience is just such a reason, although it’s not the only one.  So I’m not going to listen to my cynical side.  And next time I have to convince someone why adding insulation is a good idea, I’ll be able to say something like this: remember the ice storm of 2008 when you lost power for over a week and temperatures inside your house dropped to around freezing? Well if you insulate, that shouldn’t happen again.

For those who aren’t familiar with Hubway here’s a quick lowdown.  There are currently 60+ bike stations with 600+ bikes around Boston, and there are plans to expand to other neighborhoods and surrounding towns this year.  In order to ride you need to purchase a membership–annual if you plan to ride regularly ($85); casual 24-hour ($5) or casual 3-day ($12) if your use will be short-term.  Whatever plan you choose, you get an unlimited number of rides up to 30 minutes each.

The beauty of the system–and what makes it work–is that you can check a bike out from one station and return it to another.  Which means that Hubway provides an alternative to walking and public transportation.  It’s green, it’s healthy, it’s convenient for residents and visitors alike.  It’s brilliant, if you ask me.

Building Energy keynote experience. Image credit: Matthew Cavanugh Photgraphy

I spent the majority of last week attending Building Energy, an annual conference put on by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA).  NESEA is a driving force behind the advancement of sustainable energy and green building in the Northeast, and Building Energy attracts the best and brightest in the field.  For three days building science geeks, energy policy wonks, design visionaries and sustainability thought leaders gather together to chart a course to better buildings and a better world.  It’s an intense learning experience, especially for a relative neophyte like me.

Part of what makes it so intense is that the broader stakes are everywhere felt.  Climate change.  Unconventional fossil fuels.  Extreme weather.  Almost every session I attended and conversation I had was infused with a sense of urgency about the environmental challenges we are facing and the belief that time is running out, both in the building sector and more broadly, to find solutions.

Which isn’t to say that the mood was wholly or even primarily pessimistic.  The conference highlighted breakthrough technologies, best practices and broader trends in design and construction that give cause for cautious optimism.  For example, just six years ago, the Annual Energy Outlook projected that building sector energy use would climb 45% between 2005 and 2030.  But earlier this year, Architecture 2030, a nonprofit group pushing for carbon neutrality in the building sector, announced that the rapid advance and widespread adoption of green building practices have dramatically changed that outlook. According to AEO 2011, the worst case scenario would be a 14% rise in energy use by 2030, while the best case scenario has energy use dropping by 9%.  In other words, achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 is not just some crazy pipe dream cooked up by a bunch of fanatics.

On the other hand, there is also uncertainty about whether we, as a society, have the collective will to achieve this best case scenario and, more generally, to live within planetary means.  What makes Building Energy intense–and why I like it so much–is that it doesn’t just showcase technical expertise.  It also asks participants to confront seriously the barriers to creating a sustainable future.

There are of course as many different types of barriers–economic, political, social-cultural, technical–as there are proposals for surmounting them.  In keeping with my interest in personal sustainability, I found myself repeatedly mulling the barrier of complacency and considering how we can better engage the unconverted.

The truth is that most people–almost everyone who lives in, works in, and visits the buildings we are striving to build and retrofit to high(er) performance standards–are unconverted.  Of course, there are some conservation-minded folks who beat the modeled energy use of their buildings, and yes, they are inspiring.  But most people–even some who invest in the highest performance design standards available–aren’t motivated to conserve.

This house consumed 1,959 kWh — that is, 36% of projected usage and two and a half times less than what the PV array produced. Have you ever known anyone to use so little electricity?

Paul Panish and Mike Duclos, of DEAP Energy Group, provided a striking illustration of this problem in their comparative case study of two single-family homes built to extremely stringent energy standards whose actual energy use varied sevenfold.  Yes you read that correctly: one house ended up using 7-times more energy than the other (You can learn more about this case study on Green Building Advisor).

How did this happen?  Well, the same way it happens in “standard” homes.  One family left their lights on all the time while the other family didn’t.  One family plugged in lots of electronic gadgets while the other family didn’t.  One family set their heat at 60 and the other ran an electric space heater in one of their bedrooms.  And so on.

So why would a family build to stringent standard and then use energy so extravagantly?  Panish suspects that a perverse logic may be at work: precisely because the family invested so heavily in the envelope and mechanicals, they felt entitled to leave their lights on all day and all night.

This may be stating the obvious… but cultural norms are working against us here. Which is all the more reason why the green building community needs to get serious about behavior.  We need to make it clear early on to our clients that their habits and choices count.  And we need to make it much, much easier for them to properly operate and maintain their buildings (let them have manuals!).  And, like Panish and Duclos we need to track performance. And if/when we discover that behavior is throwing things off, we need to advise our clients (how) to make changes.

But we can’t stop at behavior.  We have to give people a reason to care in the first place.  We all know that the moral argument for conservation hasn’t proven all that compelling.  The question is what will?

I’m in the camp of those who believe that mainstreaming green building will require bald appeals to self-interest.  Also at Building Energy, Alex Wilson presented his latest work on a new conceptual framework for green building: resilience, or the ability of buildings to maintain livable conditions in the event and aftermath of a disaster.  Wilson recommends that the green building community move away from talking about “green” or even “sustainability” and instead focus on resilience in large part because he believes it will be more compelling to people, especially after the spate of extreme weather we suffered in 2011.

My next post will explore Wilson’s work on building resilience and consider whether this can (finally) puncture our complacency.

Enter MyEnergy: an energy software company that retrieves and tracks utility data for residential consumers (whose utilities offer an online account portal) for free.  Sign up is incredibly simple: you enter your utility account information along with your login and password.  And, voila, MyEnergy creates a dashboard that displays your usage, compares it to your neighbors and offers you tips to help you save.  Each month you receive a usage summary by email and your dashboard automatically updates to reflect your latest usage data.  MyEnergy is also working on incentives to encourage savings.  Try it out and let me know what you think.  Is the feedback better that what you can get from your utility?

As you may have guessed, this last bit was what first attracted me to the Not So Big House.  I’ve written elsewhere (for example here and here) about the environmental burden posed by the upward trend in American home size over the past half century, so I don’t want to belabor the point here.  Suffice it to say that home size is a huge driver of residential energy use, and that in order for the residential sector to be part of the solution to the environmental challenges we face, we need to be building smaller, a lot smaller.

But sustainability probably isn’t what attracts most people to Susanka’s books.  I would venture that what most people find appealing is the emphasis on livability.  Which isn’t to say Susanka is silent on sustainability.  She often touches on the environmental benefits of her approach, but what’s front and center is the experience of occupying smaller, more comfortable, functional and thoughtfully designed homes.

In some respects, the Not So Big House is a very simple and intuitive idea.  Just consider where you spend your time at home.  Where do you eat? Hang out? Entertain?  Most people I know, myself included, rarely use their formal rooms.  Perhaps the dining room is called into service a handful of times each year for holidays.  Perhaps the living room is called into service during large parties (and we all know how often we host large parties).  But for everyday living, and even regular entertaining, most people use their comfortable and informal spaces. What Susanka is saying to me (and others like me) is this: Next time you buy or build don’t invest in space that you’ll rarely use. Invest in design details and high quality finishes that will transform all of the house and not just a few select rooms into your home.

She’s convinced a lot of people, including me, that a Not So Big House is a better house.  But I’ve started to wonder: is it also, as I initially thought, a more sustainable house?  Last week, I received an email newsletter from Susanka announcing the opening of a Not So Big Showhouse in Libertyville, Illinois.  While I was impressed by the space plan and design details, I was disappointed by the overall size of the home, which at 2450 square feet is actually larger than the average new American home built in 2010.

I don’t know the myriad factors that informed the overall dimensions of Susanka’s latest showhouse.  There are surely constraints and concerns that are not apparent from the outside.  But I do know that the message “smaller is better” gets lost if the showhouse isn’t actually smaller.  Not to mention that show house will use more energy than it otherwise would have.

Which brings me back to the point I decided not to belabor earlier: the bigger you build a house, the more energy it will use.  Unless of course you build the bigger house to higher energy performance standards than you would have if you had built it smaller.  But this would never happen, except perhaps in Wonderland.

So what is the right size, not just for livability but sustainability?  Well… fortunately there are some proposed answers to this question out there.   In fact, there is currently a very lively discussion happening on green building advisor among folks who would like to pin some hard and fast numbers onto the ideal of building smaller (as part of a broader discussion of what makes for a “Pretty Good House”). The numbers proposed, and hotly debated, are 1000-1500-1750-1875 square feet for 1, 2, 3, and 4 occupants respectively.  Whatever you think of those particular numbers (I suspect many homeowners would think them too small), it’s really good put them out there and debate them, even if consensus proves elusive.

Is the Not So Big House too big too be sustainable?  I would say that as embodied in Susanka’s new showhouse it is.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on the Not So Big concept.  On the contrary, I want to refine the concept–and, yes, try to attach some hard(er) and fast(er) numbers to it.  The Not So Big House has an incredible amount of potential to help transform the residential landscape, so that our homes are more functional, more enjoyable and part of the solution to the environmental challenges we face.  But we can’t realize this potential if we keep building homes that are As Big As the Average American Home.