Externalize the profits of energy efficiency by valles

I read again, and another issue is that you talk about your income, but you're really talking about your "revenues". You will have costs that you haven't included. How do you propose to increase the efficiency of these houses? Increased insulation? Dual-pane windows? New furnaces, water heaters, etc? The materials and time for any of these will cost you. And then there's the cost of maintenance. Who's going to take care of these things? I would guess that the homeowner's going to expect you to do the maintenance. You need to flesh out the costs to come up with a realistic expectation of income; and, therefore, economic viability.

Following the posted comments, I'd like to add a few thoughts: Increasing a building's energy efficiency usually requires capital investment. You need to carefully calculate the payback, and make sure you have the resources to begin with. And if the provider gets 100% of the savings, what would motivate the building owner to collaborate?.. they may enjoy better thermal comfort, but arguably they can also keep wasting energy on heating or cooling (if anyway they pay the same). I think you may want to consider a more moderate approach, in which the owner gets to benefit from at least some of the savings, or maybe the company only gets to reap for the first years to cover the expenses and provide some profit, and later on the building owner has it all. It's kind of like having a company from another country build you a subway train system, have them collect all the revenue for 20 years, and then they leave and your city owns the system, takes care of operating and maintaining it, and also collects the revenue. Here's an interesting company that does something similar, taking advantage of incentives from the state gov't and the utility companies: http://pages.nextstepliving.com/Energy_MA?referring=001C0000018oIVY&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Energy_MA&utm_content=&utm_term=next%20step%20living&utm_device=c&gclid=COGQ_NGDhr4CFaN9Ogodq0YAYw Cheers !..

Dear valles, I like the win/win approach and having campaigns to attract people from different political views. To improve your proposal, you may give specific examples of possible campaigns. These maybe customized based on the different regions of US. Also, taking your grandma's house as a baseline is a good start to point out the possible savings, but you have not mentioned how the carbon emission could be reduced. Saving dollars is of course a benefit, however should not be the only purpose of this application. Best wishes, Gunesh

The idea is good one. For decades now, companies have worked in the large commercial and industrial sector offering a similar business proposition. Known as energy service companies, these organizations implement energy efficiency measures, estimate savings, and share the savings with their customers. I assume that this proposal intends to take this business model to the household and small business level, which right now are not served by such companies. My main concern about the proposal, and it's a big one, is that it's completely lacking in details about how the idea would be implemented. How would savings opportunities be identified and analyzed? How would they be installed? How would savings be evaluated? How would the proceeds be split between the company and the building owner (I suspect that 100% going to the company would not motivate many building owners)? How much would all these activities cost? How would those costs compare to the proceeds such a company could generate? Instead of dealing with these questions, the proposal talks about an advertising campaign paid for by the government. What it is that would be advertised is a mystery. My suggestion is that instead of spending time and money on an advertising campaign, that the entrant focus on answering some of the questions above, and perhaps try out the concept on a few houses.