Why Do You Need an Energy Plan?

Achieving Our Goals in Life Requires Planning

If you think about it, there's not much we can accomplish without a good solid plan. We make plans for what we want to do this weekend, how and when we will buy our first house, pay for our kids college education, snag those elusive Red Sox tickets, vacation in the White Mountains, and someday retire comfortably. We develop plans for the small things (what's for dinner?) as well as the most important milestones of our lives. We even create plans for our other plans: a financial plan to achieve our other goals of a comfortable retirement or a well deserved vacation.

This site has one primary goal: to help you develop an energy plan to reduce your household's energy consumption. A plan that is customized to your family and fits your household's needs.

Don't think you need an energy plan? Consider this: your house very likely uses a lot more energy than it needs to keep your family comfortable. Most homes waste a lot of energy; as fuel prices continue to rise most of us can not afford to be without an energy plan to rein in these expenses.

There are, of course, many other reasons to reduce our energy consumption: concerns about climate change, energy security and independence, and certainly our frugal yankee belief that wasting anything is bad and should be avoided.

We'll help you create an energy plan that's right for you

Over the next year or so, we'll be releasing a series of web-based tools that can help you create and implement an energy plan for your household. Regardless of whether you are just getting started in reducing your energy consumption or have made numerous efficiency changes already and are now looking for deeper reductions (and perhaps renewable energy) our tools can help you achieve your energy goals.

The people behind My Energy Plan

My Energy Plan is a collaborative effort of several organizations dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and sustainable energy options at the household and community level in New Hampshire and throughout the Northeast.

The University of New Hampshire developed the conceptual blueprints for the My Energy Plan tools and all software programming was done at UNH's Research Computer Center. (Denise Blaha, Bill Armstrong)

Clean Air-Cool Planet staff members provided essential input throughout the development process and lead efforts to outreach and promote My Energy Plan throughout New England. Clean-Air Cool Planet also validated the underlying energy assumptions and emission coefficients used in the New England Carbon Estimator. (Julia Dundorf, AJ Dowling, Anne Stephenson)

New Hampshire Sustainable Energy Association made possible the Energy Project Connector and Green Homes Tourist systems as NHSEA provided the key datasets and access to networks and information that are the foundation of both of these tools. (Madeline McElaney)

UNH Cooperative Extension Energy Answers volunteers provided research assistance and served on our Residential Advisory Group (Mary Tebo Davis, Paul Bonaparte Krogh)

Thanks to our Residential Advisors!

Before we make any of our tools available on this website, we have volunteers take the tools for a test drive. Their feedback and suggestions as residents and homeowners help ensure the tools are as easy to use as possible. And they've given us great ideas for future enhancements!

Why we seem to have a New Hampshire focus

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission has been the principal funding source for My Energy Plan. Additional support was provided by Stonyfield Farm for technical enhancements to the New England Carbon Challenge and My Energy Plan. Whenever possible, we have generalized the tools to be applicable to other states. Two of the tools however, Green Homes Tourist and the Energy Project Connector, use state specific datasets and as such need additional funding to be customized to other states. If you'd like to learn more about expanding our tools to your state, please contact Denise.