Have you ever been curious about how other rating organizations are getting their builder’s homes to pass updated codes like IECC 2021? With codes constantly changing and standards becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at how one of our own clients approached this challenge. We’re diving into one of our client’s Scenario Modeling projects to understand their approach, see which scenarios they analyzed, and review the results. 

Raters are often tasked how to earn more tax credits without making making major changes to the builder’s spec. We asked one ‘what-if’ design change question to see what one change could do for all homes built in 2021. We ran the numbers and found an opportunity to earn builders across the country $65M in incentives.

Ekotrope’s 2021 Year-in-Review is here! With over 240,000 homes rates in Ekotrope RATER over the course of 2021, we have some pretty expansive insights on trends in HERS rated homes. Read on to find out which states had the highest number of HERS Ratings, which had the best HERS performance, which had the best 45L performance, and what the trending specs are for homes.

The first in-person RESNET Conference since 2020 is almost here! Ekotrope’s own Ziv Rozenblum, Cy Kilbourn, David Pedrick, and Jacob Kamen will be presenting 4 sessions that inform you on how to find the right energy efficient products for your projects, how to utilize our Scenario Modeling tool to achieve net-zero emissions, understand the impact of IECC 2021 for you and your builders, and a demonstration on how to make your field data collection process seamless utilizing Ekotrope tools.

One of the easiest and most cost-effective places we can reduce our carbon footprint is in the kitchen. In this article we discuss simple tips and tricks for cooking that you can employ to save time, reduce your utility bills, and do your part to save our planet. Whether it’s your daily dinner routine or prepping for a big holiday party, these simple tips can go along way if we all do our part!

While Ekotrope has aimed to streamline every step of home energy modeling, there remains one headache for our users - piecing together all of the software tools that you use to have one simple, seamless rater workflow. We’re introducing Inspection Sync - a major new innovation to seamlessly integrate your inspection software with Ekotrope RATER. Read more to learn about the types and characteristics of high-quality software as well as common workflows that can be optimized with Inspection Sync, Ekotrope RATER, and other off-the-shelf software. 

For years we have strived to make energy efficiency easy by providing the #1 HERS rated tool in the country. Beyond that we’ve helped utility programs boost their program participation rates; aided mortgage institutions in innovating green finance; & launched new solutions for green building product manufacturers that aim to connect builders and raters to energy efficient products that will improve the quality of their projects. With all of these new initiatives, the Ekotrope team felt that it was important to ensure we align ourselves with a clear direction for Ekotrope as we continue to grow and expand. In order to best serve you, our trusted clients, we must have a clear understanding of what it is that we want to achieve and create a roadmap for doing such. 

The process of importing inspection data as it exists today is time consuming, costly, and error prone. Beyond that, it can negatively impact your builder clients as the backlog of data that needs to be transcribed creates a bottleneck in your ability to share critical reports with builder clients. We’ve heard from you just how painstaking and time-consuming this process can be, and we are now solving this problem with our latest engineering effort.

Builders today are on the hunt for energy efficiency improvements and positive outcome design tradeoffs. Meanwhile, Building Product Manufacturers (BPMs) are busy creating and marketing innovative products to help builders build more efficient, lower cost homes. Unfortunately, the home construction industry has a major information gap between builders and BPMs when it comes to identifying a good match between a builder and a product, and certainly when it comes to quantifying the benefits of that product. Read more to learn how Ekotrope can close this gap and help both BPMs and builders construct more efficient homes.

Ekotrope has earned a spot on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest growing private companies in the country! We are both humbled and honored by this achievement, especially as this past year was unlike any other that we have faced. Through it all, Ekotrope has seen tremendous growth all thanks to our loyal customers.

There’s no secret and not much debate: in order to reach the US climate goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, our buildings will need to consume electricity rather than burning fossil fuels. The reason is pretty simple: gas equipment always emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). We’re diving into the issues with fossil fuel equipment, the current rates at which new construction homes use it, and how incentive structures for using electric equipment can help alleviate these issues.

A utility-sponsored new homes energy efficiency program provides a great mechanism for utilities to incentivize energy efficiency. These programs benefit customers by helping to improve the efficiency of new homes, they benefit builders by allowing them to capture rebates for efficient building practices, and they benefit utilities by allowing them to strategically reduce and control demand. We’re diving into the components that make a residential new construction program successful and giving our recommendations for how to implement them.

You asked, we answered! The 2021 IECC has been approved and finalized, it is ready for adoption by states and local governments, and it has been determined by the US Government to be 9% more efficient than the 2018 IECC. We’re dissecting the highlights, the changes, and the impact of IECC 2021 so that you don’t have to.

The HERS Index is breaking into the new homes mortgage market as part of a program launched by Fannie Mae, PEG, and Ekotrope. The Single-Family Green Mortgage-Backed Security (MBS) is a monumental step in innovating green finance and encouraging both the production and investment in energy efficient housing. The Single Family Green MBS presents an immense opportunity and a major paradigm shift that now allows us to analyze the value stream of not just owning an energy efficient home, but financing it as well.

The Ekotrope team is excited to share with you our latest innovation, Scenario Modeling. It takes the guesswork out of conducting complex net-zero analyses and turns this hassle of a process into a major asset, enabling you to better aid your clients and provide them with more in-depth analyses with multiple pathway options for accomplishing their energy efficiency goals. Rating companies currently using our Scenario Modeling tool have saved time, exceeded client expectations, and are now able to sell this analysis as a separate service.

Since Covid hit the US in earnest in March 2020 there has been a lot of buzz amongst home professionals about how to make homes healthier for their occupants. But, even before Covid, health and comfort were at least as important to homeowners as energy efficiency.

The Ekotrope team is thrilled to share that we were featured on the front page of the MIT News this past month. CEO  Ziv Rozenblum and Lead Engineer Nick Sisler were interviewed by Zach Winn to talk about the history behind Ekotrope as well as our vision for the future.

In this blog, David Pedrick (former HER and QAD) outlines the 5 best places to look for energy efficiency improvements in your home. For raters, we want this article to act as a sort of set of quick tips you can share with friends, family, and neighbors who are trying to make energy efficient improvements to their homes.

Ekotrope is very excited to announce that we have hit a new milestone for our HERS rating tool, RATER. Last month we officially reached 500,000 confirmed ratings! Along the way, we’ve come across some interesting findings that we’d like to share with you all.

While HPWH systems have been sold in the U.S. for over 40 years, they’ve struggled to penetrate the market and gain share from traditional water heaters. Now, if heat pumps are one of the most cost effective ways to reduce energy consumption and emissions, why aren’t they more widely used? We chatted with Mike Ostiguy, Vice President of Operations at Abode Energy Management, about some of the issues and misconceptions associated with HPWHs as well as how we can help to solve them.