US housing accounted for over 22% of the country's total primary energy consumption in
2009, which equated to more than $2000 per household and $229 billion in aggregate
expenditure. It appears that these amounts could be reduced substantially, with benefits to
both household budgets and the environment's well-being. This paper's goal is to evaluate
the alternative mechanisms that could expedite energy efficiency retrofits for US housing.
We begin by evaluating the evidence that significant improvements in the energy efficiency …