This post first appeared in the September edition of Cirios Trends: Getting to the Bottom of the Housing Market

Improving your home’s energy efficiency doesn’t just help the environment — it allows you to unlock hidden value just waiting to be tapped.

Ask most homeowners, or anyone for that matter, what pops into their mind when they think of energy efficiency or a “Green Home,” and it’s likely “solar panels” and “expensive.”

Ciriosly Green Real Estate’s mission is to debunk the myth that energy efficiency at home is a luxury reserved only for the wealthy. It’s often the simplest, least expensive improvements that can have the biggest impact.

Case in point: Solar. Installing solar panel systems on homes is a notoriously bad business. Sure, there’s a ton of buzz around solar, even generous tax incentives for homeowners who install panels on their roofs. But for solar installation firms, the bigger the system, the bigger the profit.

The result: Solar installers are incentivized to sell homeowners the most expensive system possible. What they don’t tell you, because it hurts their bottom line, is that before you even think about solar, a series of non-sexy green improvements (fix your ducts, improve your insulation, seal your home’s shell), can reduce your energy usage so much that even a small, inexpensive solar system can power your entire home.

So, before you go solar, go energy efficient.

Energy efficiency in our homes has a material impact on the environment. In the US, energy consumption of our buildings accounts for at least 40% of our total energy use. About half of that is attributed to residential structures. According to the EPA, the average US household is responsible for emitting nearly 9,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air, per person each year.

To put that in perspective, NPR’s Car Talk guys say that burning one gallon of gas creates 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. If your car gets 20 miles per gallon, just living in your home each year has the same impact of driving from San Francisco to New York, then back to San Francisco, then back to New York.

So great, what can you do? Here are 5 tips to save energy around the house and reduce your carbon footprint. None of them will happen if you just sit idly by on your couch, but then again, not much typically happens when you just sit on your couch anyway.

1) Seal your home’s shell. As air leaks out cracks in your home, your heater and/or air conditioner works overtime, jacking up your electric bill. A simple Home Performance test can identify this leakage — most gaps are cheap and easy to fill.

2) Get between the walls. Insulation is the best bang-for-the buck green improvement you can make. New techniques are cheaper and a whole lot more effective than the messy pink fiberglass you’re probably used to.

3) Seal your ducts. The ducts that carry air around your house get worn out and crack, or can get pinched by a careless contractor shuffling around your crawl space. Not only does your heating and cooling system have to work harder to pump the same amount of air, but dirty air from your attic or under the house can get sucked up and distributed around your house. Have a child with Asthma? Check your ducts.

4) Unplug the Vampires. Standby loads, or “Vampire Loads,” are appliances and electronics draining power even when they are switched off. Did you know that 75% of a TV’s energy use comes while you’re not even watching? Plug these standby loads into a power strip with an off button and flip on the strip only when you’re using your TV or other appliances.

5) Light it up! Replace your traditional light bulbs with low energy, compact fluorescent lighting (CFLs). This can cut your lighting-related energy costs by up to 50-75%.

The best part about improving your home’s energy efficiency is that you get to not only save money, but enjoy a more comfortable and healthy home. Oh, and by the way Mother Nature won’t complain, either.

It appears the desire to churn houses off an assembly line isn’t just reserved for home builders carving up hillsides.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Zeta Communities, a prefab real estate developer, is working on an experimental home in Oakland to display its unique building technology. Zeta, or Zero Energy Technology and Architecture, offers architects and builders a chance to build extremely energy efficient homes in the factory, reducing costs and increasing efficiency. In Zeta’s words:

“The building produces an energy load that’s only 60% of what a standard similarly sized home would use. It’s cheaper and twice as fast to build the multi-family house in a factory than to build it on-site. A factory-built Zeta home also generates half the waste of an on-site home.”

Two thoughts come to mind:
1) Take a look around Oakland and Emeryville and tell me how well prefab-esque condos are selling, and
2) If they can really deliver energy efficiency for less money,
we say bring it on – put Pulte Home and its eyesores out of
its misery!

This post first appeared on Minyanville.

It’s starting to make economic sense to go green.

Last summer, with gas prices topping $4 per gallon and commodities of all kinds becoming more expensive, renewable energy advocates thought their day in sun — so to speak — had finally arrived.

Investors flocked to industry leaders like First Solar (FSLR) and SunPower (SPWRA), whose stocks leapt to new highs. On July 8, 2008, renowned investor T. Boone Pickens announced an ambitious plan to wean America off its dependence on foreign oil. Later that week, crude touched an all-time high of $147.02 per barrel.

Since then, oil — along the rest of the commodity complex — has plunged, dashing hopes that renewable energy would soon be as cheap, if not cheaper, than traditional, dirty fossil fuels. But now, with the economy in free fall and Washington scrambling to boost productivity, renewable energy has been taken off life support.

Part of the recently passed $797 billion economic stimulus package gives incentives to homeowners to adopt energy-saving appliances, solar panels and other eco-friendly add-ons. Increased tax credits for qualifying expenditures can reduce tax bills by thousands of dollars a year. The catch (and there’s always a catch when the government is involved): Benefits only arrive if you shell out big bucks for pricey green gear.

Tax credits are applicable on new expenditures, and since solar-panel systems run in the tens of thousands of dollars, the 30% tax credit isn’t exactly like socking money away in the bank. Still, green construction firms and solar panel installation outfits like Akeena Solar (AKNS) are eager snatch up new business.

Before the credit crunch and the ensuing financial meltdown, Akeena had actually partnered with Comerica Bank (CMA) to offer low interest loans for buyers of new solar-energy systems, a portion of which could be backed by the value of the home. Since monthly loan payments were easier to stomach than plunking down cash to buy a new system, these new lending programs could have made solar available to the masses.

But now that home values have plummeted and lenders are reticent to part with their precious dollars, such borrowing programs are nearly impossible to find. Still, for those homeowners intrepid enough to take the plunge, tax credits offer an attractive reason to get off the green fence.

While solar power isn’t as economically efficient as traditional electricity sources, the more money that’s pumped into new technologies — even if it’s through a combination of private and public investment — the sooner we’re likely to reach the parity solar advocates have been promising for decades.

And the sooner that happens, the better.