Sealing homes’ leaky HVAC systems is a sneaky good climate solution
Leslie Kaufman | Bloomberg News (TNS) There’s a hidden scourge making homes more harmful to the climate and less comfortable: leaky heating and cooling systems. Plugging those leaks may be the dull stepchild of the energy transition, but that doesn’t make it any less important than installing dazzling solar arrays and getting millions of electric vehicles on the road. The problem, however, is that energy efficiency pays back over time, but it comes with high upfront costs. “It can be a very, very labor intensive process to capture all the efficiency improvements in the housing stock and a lot of the issues — as well as a lot of the solutions — are pretty much unknown, or invisible to the average consumer,” said Jennifer Amann, a senior fellow with the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s buildings program. “You could pay somebody a few $1,000 to come in, and insulate your home and do air sealing, but those aren’t improvements that you are going to see or engage with,” Amann said. “So a lot of times people are thinking, ‘Well, do I want to