Bounce Energy, a Texas electricity company, has posted an simple to read report on its website to help consumers who are considering whether or not to take advantage of the 2009-2010 Energy Efficiency Federal Income Tax Credit.
The US Government’s Energy Star Program reports that the typical American household spends approximately $1,300 per year on home energy bills. The Environmental Protection Outfit estimates that homeowners can typically save up to 20% of heating and cooling expenditure (or up to 10% of total energy expenditure – or $130) by air sealing their homes through caulking and sealing drafts. Furthermore, a home owner can save up to $300 from their once a year heating and cooling expenditure by sealing leaks and insulating their duct work.
So, for less than $200 and just a few weekend hours of sealing holes and cracks or tape over leaky duct work, a homeowner can potentially save up to $400 from their once a year heating and cooling expenditure.
In fact, any energy efficiency improvements immediately lower energy bills and will pay for themselves over time. This is especially right when considering the major hardware components of a home:
For the report, they cite an example of a modest starter home: a single-tale 3-bedroom 1750 sq. foot home built in 2008 on the Gulf Coast. By installing Energy Star-rated hardware upgrades such as new triple-pane insulating low-E, argon gas wood-framed windows, a total-house on-demand water heater, and count 6 inches of attic insulation, a homeowner can recoup 56% from their yearly energy expenditure. By count in the energy tax credit, the owner can receive nearly $2,000 on a $4750 investment.
Energy well-organized features will also enhance the market value and saleability of a home and –most importantly – improve its comfort and livability.
The 2009 and 2010 Energy Efficiency Tax Credit for home improvements is a tax credit of 30% or $1,500 for energy well-organized improvements that consumers make to their existing home. In order to claim the credit, the energy well-organized improvements must be qualifying Energy Star-rated harvest and placed in service from January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010.
According to the Energy Star website (www.energystar.gov):
In the end you can spend up to $5,000 during this 2 year period on a single or multiple improvements, and get 30% or $1,500 (30% of $5,000 = $1,500) back as a tax credit. If you get the entire $1,500 credit in 2009, then you can’t get anything bonus in 2010. The $1,500 tax credit does not dual for married people filing jointly… unless both spouses owned and lived apart in separate main homes.
The tax credit does not include things like caulking and weather stripping. Rather, the tax credit aids in replacing those major hardware components of a home such as windows, doors, insulation, roofs, HVAC, non-solar water heaters, or biomass (usually wood) stoves. Some installation expenditure are covered, such as non-solar water heaters and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC).
In addition to the credit for existing homes, there is a credit with no final cost limit for more complex yet far-well-organized projects that promote energy independence: geothermal heat pumps, solar water heaters, electricity-producing solar panels (PV), fuel cells, and small wind energy systems. Projects like these will receive a credit of 30% of their total cost and have until 2016 to be placed in service.
The Energy Star website has wealth of information as well as links to other government websites about all the improvements covered in Bounce Energy’s report. Remember these are all upgrades that keep saving cash each year. Some can be improved on further, one step at a time.
So, is the Energy Tax Credit worth it?Bounce Energy says, “Yes, the Energy Tax Credit is worth it because an energy efficiency improvement will save energy and cash and make your home more comfortable. As you can see there are many, many ways to capitalize on energy efficiency improvements to your home; from the weekend with a caulking gun to a four week wind turbine adventure with a 60 foot crane. You might even become so energy well-organized you’ll be energy self-sufficient.”
Posts Tagged ‘Report’
Analyzing the New Yahoo! RSS Report for Marketers
Friday, January 8th, 2010We were waiting for a touch like this to happen for a
long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market
RSS aggregators, irrevocably took a step forward and in print
their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS,
based on their usage data.
1. YAHOO!’S KEY FINDINGS
Let’s first take a look at Yahoo! key findings and what
they mean for marketers.
a] Awareness of RSS is reasonably low among Internet users. 12%
of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.
Even if RSS awareness is increasing, only few internet
users yet know what RSS is and how to use it.
For marketers, this means that simply placing an RSS button
on their site it not nearly enough, with the report irrevocably
demonstrating that marketers needs to use clear and
believable copy to get their visitors interested in RSS,
clarify RSS to them and get them to subscribe to their
feeds.
In addition it also shows that marketers need to make sure
they are using “user-friendly” buttons to generate
subscribers, such as “Add to MyYahoo!”, which consumers do
know.
b] 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on
personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without
knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.
This finding only underlines the above suggestions.
Stop touting your RSS feeds only using an RSS button, but
rather aim for a “subscribe feature” and then clarify to
the visitor how to use it.
Strong copy has never been so vital.
c] 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only
2% currently subscribe to podcasts.
Goes to show that podcasting still has a long way to go and
can right now function only as a supplement to your
existing marketing activities.
It might also give an indication that audio is not the most
appropriate format for much online content.
d] Even tech-savoir-faire “Aware RSS Users” prefer to access RSS
feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g.,
My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).
e] My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any
RSS-enabled product.
Both of the findings above, even if indicating that these
are the results Yahoo! would want to publish, show that
having browser-based RSS reader subscribe buttons is a must.
It also shows that the market is ready for the soon-coming
IE and Outlook integrated RSS features, which should really
boost RSS usage among consumers online.
Now, let’s take a deeper look at the report …
2. “UNAWARE RSS USERS” VS “AWARE RSS USERS”
The whitepaper makes a strong distinction between “Unacquainted
RSS Users” and “Aware RSS Users”, positioning the “Unacquainted”
batch as the mainstream Internet populace.
This makes it unquestionably clear that B2C marketers,
targeting consumers, should take special care to promote
their feeds using “friendly” subscribe buttons.
On the other hand, if targeting a more tech-savoir-faire audience,
going the way of “RSS” and more complex RSS reading tools
might be a better choice. This might also verify more
effectual for targeting executives and other corporate
target audiences that might be using an enterprise-wide RSS
solution, such as NewsGator.
3. CONSUMPTION LEVELS
The whitepaper says that on the average “Aware RSS Users”
subscribe to 6.6 feeds.
The consequences of this are not as simple as they might
seem. Even “RSS Aware” users do not subscribe to “just
anything” and seems they only subscribe or keep being
subscribed to the content of highest relevance to them.
The message for marketers is to become even more relevant
and more focused on providing real value for their target
audiences.
RSS does not mean that end-users will start consuming that
much more online content, but simply that their primary
consumption channel will exchange. It’s up to you to make
place for yourself in this consumption channel, but you can
only do so if you become one of the key targeted content
providers for your market and can deliver consistently
high-feature content.
4. TYPES OF RSS CONTENT CONSUMED
Even in the world of RSS, mainstream media rules, with
World news and Inhabitant news both leading the pack at 52%
and followed by Entertainment at 34% and Weather ad 31%.
If we take a look at what lies beneath this we can see that
end-users still see RSS as a news consumption tool and a
tool to receive time-sensitive updates, such as weather
info.
The appealing part is that blogs achieve only 23% and
even if they are gaining quickly are still not part of the
mainstream.
Whichever way you look at this, the real long tail is still
far from fruition.
There are two are appealing categories listed in the
report: investment/financial info/banking at 13% and
Shopping/online commerce at 10%.
The popularity of these two shows that RSS in fact is
appropriate for delivering business info and that RSS can
be used for e-commerce. A strong case in point urging
e-retailers to start providing RSS feeds.
5. WHY END-USERS USE RSS
“RSS Aware” end-users subscribe to feed because of “ease”
or “convenience”, followed by being able to choose what
they read.
To marketers, these three should be the founding stones of
how to get their visitors to adopt RSS.
6. THE FAMOUS ORANGE BUTTON
Marketers, pay attentin to this.
Only 4% of total RSS end-users really use the orange XML
button, and only 38% of RSS aware users use it.
It seems the orange button isn’t dead … it was never
alive.
Let’s go on and replace it with a touch more
user-friendly.
And BTW — 22% of the people that clicked on the button
don’t even know what action they took after clicking the
button and 26% left the site. Goes to show the RSS button
is only losing us subscribers.
7. HOW USERS FIND THEIR FEEDS
50% use the defaults available in the RSS reader and only
13% use the search engines to find them.
Yes, it’s cruical to be in the RSS feed search engines, but
it would be even better if you could go your way to the
default seetings. And by all means, actively promote the
feeds on your site as end-users, according to the report,
actively tend to subscribe to the feeds on the sites they
find appealing.
8. CONCLUSION
To conclude this, here’s a direct quote from the report,
saying exactly what I’ve been trying to get through for a
couple of months:
“To spot RSS among mainstream Internet users, it is
elemental to effectively communicate the benefits of RSS
(ease, convenience, access to information of interest).
Internet users do not know how to use the XML button,
how to actively seek out RSS feeds, or even what the term
RSS means. Instead, they need a simple interface where they
can choose the information and content that wellbeing them.
This is where personalized start pages and browser-based
experiences can help go RSS into the mainstream.”