Conduct a home energy efficiency assessment

A great place to start on your energy efficiency journey is to complete a home energy efficiency assessment. This type of assessment looks at actual energy usage data within your home, including time-of-use data, to better understand how and when you use energy. It can be invaluable for helping you figure out where you should reduce your energy usage and providing a data-driven tool for helping guide you in reducing your carbon footprint.

You can use online tools such as the EPA’s Home Energy Yardstick or Duke Energy’s Home Energy Report to get a personalized report into your home’s energy usage. These tools are entirely free of charge, but you can alternatively also pay for a professional to conduct a home energy audit. They will often provide you more granular insights into your home’s energy consumption patterns as well as guide you through the process of reducing your carbon footprint.

Here’s an overview of some of the online tools that can assist with a DIY home energy audit:

• The EPA's Home Energy Yardstick offers a simple assessment that compares your home's annual energy use to similar homes. By entering basic information about your home, you receive a score on a scale of 0 to 10, insights into how your energy is used (e.g., heating, cooling, appliances), and tips on improving your score. This can also include an estimate of your home’s annual carbon emissions.
• Duke Energy's Home Energy Report, available to their utility customers, provides a personalized report detailing your home’s energy usage with specific suggestions for energy-saving actions. It outlines the potential savings for each action and the difficulty level involved in implementing them. It’s an ideal tool because Duke Energy directly has access to your home energy data, allowing for a particularly accurate assessment.
• Once you’ve completed the assessment, there are many online resources available to guide you in learning how to reduce your home energy usage. For example, the Department of Energy has an excellent resource called the Energy Savings Hub which we link to several times throughout this Dashboard.