Mike Rogers, OmStout Consulting, started a conversation a few weeks ago about staging deep energy retrofits -- a very interesting conversation has been so far. I'm all about staged retrofits, myself. The opportunity to move many existing houses closer to low energy/net zero in a few affordable phases is much more likely to have significant impact on residential energy use than a few super-impressive gut rehabs.
This week, Mike has raised some of the issues surrounding program-driven staged/phased retrofits. The full blog article is here: http://bit.ly/1jtSzKV.
Interestingly, he brings up some thoughts that have been niggling at me for years that circle around human behaviour and the concept of 'single action bias' -- meaning that when people take a baby step -- like replacing all their incandescent lights with CFLs -- they've done what they can do and now they are energy efficient. It's kinda like online activism -- click that petition button and you've done your part.
Baby steps like lightbulb replacement programs are tied into another issue for me -- how energy efficiency/energy saving programs are evaluated, both in terms of cost-benefit analysis and success. See my comment at the end of Mike's article: http://bit.ly/1oM9yxp.
