Now that my wife and I have made the decision to remodel our home to address, among other things, energy efficiency, it is time to look at from what sources our energy comes. Our local utility sources power primarily from coal, nuclear, natural gas, and has made substantial investments in sustainable energy as well (one biomass, one biogas, two concentrating solar, one geothermal, nine photovoltaic solar, three wind farms, and up to 3,000 distributed energy locations). While their effort to build and purchase power from sustainable energy plants is commendable, we really want all of our energy to come...

I posted “Home Performance with ENERGY STAR” in August of 2011. For a variety of reasons, mostly financial, we did not immediately solve the various issues that were revealed by the audit. However, in early June of this year, we broke ground on a remodel that will address nearly all of these issues. We stripped the kitchen and all the living areas (except living quarters) down to bare floors, walls and roof. We are upgrading our roof insulation to an ENERGY STAR rated R30; we are replacing all ceiling fixtures with sealed LED units; and we are upgrading our refrigerator and HVAC units to ENERGY STAR...