The Future of Home Performance

Home performance connects directly to two other emerging movements: going green and sustainability. Sustainability movements take the concept of looking at a house a system even broader by looking at how communities, cities and societies are structured. Home performance provides an important pillar for sustainability movements as buildings are the number area of energy use in America. By making buildings more efficient, more sustainable cities and communities becomes easier. Going green has become popular in areas from the food industry to transportation. Again home performance is crucial to the concept of green building and new technological advances are leading to innovative concepts like using your home’s solar panels to directly charge your Prius’ battery.

Improvements in standards such as LEED continue to provide a means to measure efficiency and sustainability and also award home and building owners with a rating they can be proud of. Created in the mid-1990s by the USGBC along with the American Society of Testing and Materials, the LEED standards have improved and evolved over the years. Currently LEED focuses on six aspects of building:

1.Sustainable Sites
2.Water Efficiency
3.Energy and Atmosphere
4.Materials and Resources
5.Indoor Environmental Quality
6.Innovation and Design Process
Moving into the future home performance will keep evolving as new innovative concepts are applied to homes and buildings. Further advances in solar continually decrease the cost of solar photovoltaic. The advent of geothermal energy makes energy efficiency in homes in some regions even more interesting. Realtors are seeing energy efficient homes sell for higher prices than homes that are inefficient in the same area. By also taking into account indoor air quality and health aspects, home performance provides important information to homeowners seeking to make smart choices in the homes they buy and renovate. With the price of fossil fuel based energy on the raise for the future, home performance offers solutions for individuals seeking to reduce their utility bills, make their home more comfortable and safe for their families.