About ENERGY STAR for the Residential Sector
In the residential sector, EPA enables and accelerates the deployment and integration of energy efficiency through its ENERGY STAR new construction and existing homes programs, initiatives, and resources.
ENERGY STAR New Construction Programs
ENERGY STAR partners with thousands of homebuilders and developers, manufactured housing plants, home energy rating companies, and utilities across the U.S. who construct, verify, promote, and incentivize ENERGY STAR certified homes and apartments. Homes that are eligible to earn the ENERGY STAR label include single-family, multifamily, and manufactured (factory-built) housing. Today, all of the nation’s twenty largest homebuilders construct ENERGY STAR certified homes. Homebuyers have more energy-efficient choices than ever before, with over 2 million ENERGY STAR certified new homes and apartments built to-date, and nearly 100,000 built in 2019 alone. ENERGY STAR certified homes and apartments are at least 10% more energy efficient than those built to code and achieve a 20% improvement on average while providing homeowners with better quality, performance, and comfort. EPA continues to advance its ENERGY STAR Residential New Construction Program requirements as more rigorous building energy codes are developed and adopted by States. Learn more.
Existing homes programs
ENERGY STAR offers free guidance and resources to educate and empower homeowners with unbiased information from experts about actions they can take to improve home energy efficiency. Consumers rely on ENERGY STAR as their trusted resource for practical information on saving energy, making use of popular online tools such as the ENERGY STAR Home Advisor and Home Energy Yardstick. In addition, programs such as Home Performance with ENERGY STAR and ENERGY STAR Verified HVAC Installation help homeowners access qualified home improvement contractors in their area that specialize in making homes more energy efficient and comfortable.
Program savings
In 2018, the ENERGY STAR certified New Construction Program helped homeowners save 3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, avoid $400 million in energy costs, and achieve nearly 4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions.
Spotlight on: RaterPro™
ENERGY STAR RaterPRO is a free web and mobile app designed to assist third-party home energy rating companies in conducting on−site diagnostic testing and inspections to verify that homes meet established ENERGY STAR program requirements. Through RaterPRO, raters can improve the efficiency of the rating process, capture digital photos, record notes in the field, ’geotag’ home inspection locations, and automatically sync information to the Cloud. The all-digital workflow helps rating companies deliver accurate, high-quality ratings and ensures that every ENERGY STAR certified home meets the program’s rigorous technical specifications and energy efficiency requirements.
Spotlight on: Multifamily New Construction
Historically, ENERGY STAR maintained separate programs and requirements for high-rise and low-rise multifamily buildings. This sometimes created unnecessary complexity and confusion for program partners, especially when a single development contained buildings that fell under both sets of program requirements.
To better meet the needs of ENERGY STAR partners in the multifamily sector, EPA developed the ENERGY STAR Multifamily New Construction program, which provides a consistent specification for multifamily buildings of any height. The program features a blending of technical requirements and verification protocols from the previous high- and low-rise programs and ensures that common areas are always addressed in buildings earning the ENERGY STAR label.
The new Multifamily New Construction program, which became available in January 2019, provides the needed flexibility for partners and program administrators, ensures that requirements are optimized for each project, and improves consistency with codes and market incentive programs.
For additional details about ENERGY STAR achievements see ENERGY STAR By the Numbers. For ENERGY STAR facts and figures broken down geographically by state, see ENERGY STAR State Fact Sheets. For achievements by ENERGY STAR Award Winners, see the ENERGY STAR Award Winners Page.