How To Prepare Your Home For Summer Heat Waves
From covering windows and planting trees, to upgrading your air conditioning system—PNNL scientists offer tips to keep your home cool in extreme heat.
insulation
How to Upgrade & Electrify Millions of US Homes & Buildings
The White House and Department of Energy (DOE) recently laid the foundation for two monumental home energy upgrade initiatives: the Home Efficiency Rebates program, which offers up to $8,000 to households, and the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates program, which provides up to $14,000. These rebate programs — made possible … [continued]
Insulation: The Cork That Doesn’t Go Into Wine Bottles
Cork Is A Wonderful Material Cork has uses ranging from place mats to flooring and has been harvested sustainably since Roman times. Because cork bark can be harvested every 9 years from long-lived cork oak trees, Europe has cork forests which support wildlife species found nowhere else. Insulation is increasingly … [continued]
New Eco-Friendly Home Insulation Cuts Heating & Cooling Costs
Ever since the first homes were built, people have been trying to find insulation materials that would keep them warm in winter and cool in summer. Just about everything has been tried — seaweed, sod, asbestos, tar paper, rolled up newspapers, urea foam, and pink fiberglass batting from Owens Corning. … [continued]
$5.4 Million To Research Turning Buildings Into Carbon Storage Structures
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been selected to receive over $5.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) for the development of technologies that can transform buildings into carbon storage structures. The funding is part of ARPA-E’s Harnessing Emissions into Structures Taking Inputs from … [continued]
How I Electrified My Home
By Anne Kramer Sustainability is my passion. I work in corporate sustainability and try to live as sustainably as possible. Until a year ago, this largely meant recycling, minimizing waste, and using reusable bags. Yet, my eyes were recently opened by the nonprofit Electrify Now to the biggest culprit of … [continued]
The US CLEAN Future Act — What’s In It?
Originally published on WRI’s Resource Institute Blog. By Dan Lashof, Devashree Saha, Karl Hausker, Greg Carlock, Kevin Kennedy, and Tyler Clevenger U.S. Representative Frank Pallone, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, together with subcommittee chairs Bobby Rush and Paul Tonko, introduced the CLEAN Future Act on March 2, 2021. While numerous climate bills are introduced … [continued]
Improving The Efficiency Of Your Home, Part 1: Insulation & Air Sealing
Energy efficiency can help slow the rate of climate change. Learn about making your home more efficient so you can reduce carbon production and also save money.
Home Efficiency 101: Appliances, Thermal Envelope, Lighting, Plumbing, & More
Home efficiency is one of those things you may think has been done already — building code improvements surely must’ve accounted for what we’ve known about home energy use for decades now, right?
Insulated Windows 101 — Double Glazing, Triple Glazing, Thermal Performance, & Potential Problems
Double glazing. Triple glazing. Insulated windows. Double-glazed windows. Triple-glazed windows. You’ve probably heard those terms before, but if you aren’t or haven’t been involved in construction and design work, or in the retrofitting of your own house, then you may not know exactly what they mean.
