I recently spent two weeks on a honeymoon in New Zealand. What a trip! Travel was easy (the company of a new wife was awesome), the Kiwi people are genuine and generous, and the landscape is breathtaking.

Precisely because of the natural resources and beauty of the New Zealand islands, Kiwis have a deep respect for their country. They also recognize their environment plays a vital role in their economy; the country is filled with different ecotourism options – our favorite was a Ziptrek tour in Queenstown (see video below!). Plus, there are more sheep than people on the islands, so they better take care of their resources!

I was reading about New Zealand’s sustainability efforts and came across the NZahead program. Born from the New Zealand Institute, this program produces an overall report card on three different aspects of the country: social, economic and environmental. NZahead takes an honest assessment of the state of the nation in order to make attainable three-year goals.

Why? According to Rick Boven in the NZahead video (2:10), it’s because “what gets measured gets managed”.

That comment got me thinking about Green Canopy and how we measure for the success of our retrofit process. Home buyers, and the residential housing market in general, will only believe we’re making homes more efficient if we can prove efficiency gains. Of course, we can take pictures of new windows, caulk, insulation and even heat pumps, but how does the market know they’re getting a good deal? By measuring.

Green Canopy has third parties perform energy audits – one before construction and one after – in order to produce an Energy Performance Score. The score provides the average number of kilowatt-hours and tons of carbon the home will use in a year. We set the pre- and post-construction scores next to each other to show how we improved the efficiency of the home. For example, The Grady Place, a recently finished home on Beacon Hill, started with an average usage of 25,000 kWh per year, but after our retrofit work reduced to 12,000 kWh per year – and we nearly doubled the square footage of the house! The score tells us, and our buyers, that we were successful in increasing the efficiency of the home.

Finally, there is an additional step we feel is just as important to finish the efficiency loop: ongoing energy monitoring. Our buyers can maximize our work by being as efficient as possible with their energy habits. In each of our homes, we install an energy monitoring device, like the PowerCost Monitor™, to help homeowners measure and manage their electricity usage. Without continual measurement (and behavioral change), our efforts become neutralized.

What is the CRIF?

The Carbon Reduction Incentive Fund (CRIF) is a part of the federal stimulus-funded Community Power Works Program (CPW) in Seattle. By providing wrap-around energy efficiency services for residential, commercial and industrial property owners, the Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment hopes to stimulate the energy efficiency job sector through the CPW. More