I never thought I’d look forward to an audit. For most of us, the word is associated with one thing only: financial scrutiny. The implication is that we’ve done something wrong, and there’s a likelihood of penalties to follow.
But now audits are in vogue. Every homeowner should have one, and renters should suggest it to their landlords. Many utility companies offer them at reduced rates as a public service. And I can’t wait for mine.
I’m referring, of course, to energy audits, when experts come in to assess ways to stop drafts, add insulation, and generally reduce your heating fuel consumption. Because when it comes to energy, we have done something wrong: We’ve constructed houses, apartment buildings and offices that leak heat at prodigious rates. As much as 20 to 30 percent of a typical home energy bill is money that you might as well throw out the window, because that’s where the heat is going. It’s seeping past the edges of window frames. It’s slipping around doors, wafting up chimneys, and slithering through gaps in insulation. And in an odd physical effect, some of that heat is being sucked from our bodies, leaving us cold when we sit or sleep near underinsulated walls even as our furnaces crank away. There’s a reason why we’ve never bothered much with energy audits before.
For the past 100 years or so, we haven’t considered wasted energy a problem. We’ve been wallowing in the Age of Oil, when energy has been abundant and cheap and its environmental effects easily ignored. The availability of cheap energy has affected every facet of our lifestyles: the houses we live in, the distances we’re willing to drive, the food we eat, and nearly every product we buy— along with the packaging it comes in.
That’s changing, and rapidly. Through the combination of resource depletion and worldwide growth in population and economic development, energy is no longer abundant. It’s certainly not cheap. And anyone with a conscience knows that its environmental effects—in particular the accumulation of carbon dioxide that’s contributing to global climate change—can’t be ignored.
What can you do? Start with an energy audit (see p. 56), and follow up on what you learn. Each of us may not be able to halt global warming by ourselves, but we can at least keep our personal contributions to it from seeping out the window—especially when we pay for the privilege.
P.S. We create NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GREEN GUIDE to help make going green easy, and we’d like to know if it works for you. Please take our five-minute Reader Survey at tidewatch.com/NGGreenGuide.
EVAN KAFKA
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