Residential

Clean energy projects do not have to be isolated to farms, schools, and government centers. Successful energy efficiency and renewable energy projects have been implemented on individual residential scales or on the neighborhood scale. By knowing at what scale to keep your project, you can make some real energy gains at your own home and neighborhood without breaking the bank or getting burned out.

Consult our community and utility project planning resources for more information, guides, and programs.

Contents

Energy Guides

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Home Energy Use Information & Tools – US DOE
Homeowners and renters know saving energy means saving money without sacrificing comfort. There are many things you can do to save energy in your current home, or when designing and building a new energy-efficient house.

Home Energy Guides – MN Department of Commerce Energy Info Center
The Energy Info Center offers 19 easy-to-use pamphlets with tips, suggestions, and instructions about a variety of energy related issues around your home.

Home Advisor Efficiency Tool – ENERGY STAR
Let ENERGY STAR guide you in making your home more energy efficient, reducing high energy bills, improving comfort, and protecting the environment. This tool is a great start.

A Consumer’s Guide to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – US DOE EERE
This guide will help you learn how to use the energy in your home more efficiently, and also how to use renewable energy to provide your home with electricity, heating, cooling, and water heating.

Green Homes Renovation – US Green Building Council & American Society of Interior Designers’ Foundation
This resource features best practice guidelines and targeted educational resources for sustainable residential improvement projects. This program will increase understanding of sustainable renovation project practices and benefits among homeowners, residents, design professionals, product suppliers and service providers to build both demand and industry capacity.

Organizations

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Energy Information Center – The Office of Energy Security, MN Dept. of Commerce
The Energy Information Center specializes in consumer and contractor energy issues, and are an incredibly helpful reference for residents. They also provide information about renewable energy sources.
1-800-657-3710 (MN only)
651-296-5175
651-297-7891 fax
energy.info@state.mn.us

The Center for Energy and Environment
CEE offers a variety of financing, rehabilitation, and audit services to thousands of Minnesota property owners in both the seven county metro area and statewide. They have a number of excellent resources for homeowners.

Minnesota Green Communities
Minnesota Green Communities is a collaboration of the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, the Family Housing Fund, and Enterprise designed to foster the creation of affordable, healthier, and more energy efficient housing throughout Minnesota. The initiative supports the production of affordable housing with markedly reduced energy costs, use of materials beneficial to the environment, conservation-minded land use planning, and attention to the creation of healthy environments and lifestyles for individuals, children, families, and communities.

Minnesota GreenStar Homes & Remodeling
Minnesota GreenStar is a Green building standard and certification program for both existing and new homes that promotes healthy, durable, high performance homes. MN GreenStar was designed from the ground up to be the best system for Minnesota, giving builders and remodelers the tools to excel, and providing homeowners the knowledge with which to compare the performance of their homes. MN GreenStar embraces Minnesota’s climate extremes and natural resources and leverages its building codes and national leadership in such areas as clean water and combating climate change.

Incentives

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Minnesota Solar Electric and Solar Hot Water Rebate Programs – MN Office of Energy Security
Both programs are open to all residential property owners in Minnesota. Funds are now available for both programs and will be awarded on an on-going basis until funds are exhausted. Because hiring a renewable energy contractor is one of the requirements for both rebates, the Minnesota Office of Energy Security’s Web site also includes a list of questions to ask a renewable energy contractor and a list of solar energy contractors in Minnesota.

Research & Information Resources

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CERTs Technology Resources
The following technologies are quite applicable to most residential settings:

Residential Building Research Projects – National Renewable Energy Laboratory
NREL’s research objectives in the area of residential buildings are to develop integrated energy efficiency and onsite renewable energy power solutions that can be successfully used on a large production scale to reduce whole-house energy use in new homes by 50% in 2015 and by 90% in 2025.

Case Studies

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CERTs Residential Case Studies

Solar Pioneers: SE Como Neighborhood Solar Thermal Project
As part of their work on the emerging Metro Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) Network, Green Institute is proud to release this report on one neighborhood’s effort to jump start solar thermal in the Twin Cities. It also contains useful information on the potential of solar hot water systems in Minnesota.

NE CERT Solar Home Tour