A good place to start when trying to determine your carbon footprint and find solutions for your household is myenergyplan.net. The site offers several web tools, courtesy of the New England Carbon Challenge.
First, there’s the Personal Energy Planner, which will help you calculate your carbon footprint by asking you information on your home and vehicles, then give you an action plan to reduce your energy use.
And the newest tool, Energy Project Connector, is set up to help implement a home energy project. Once you plug in your information and the type of project you need done, the tool searches all the federal, state and utility incentives available in New Hampshire and then provides a list of all the contractors and energy auditors who can do the work. The Energy Project Connector can be found at myenergyplan.net/energyconnector.
This is also the time to have your current heating system checked by a qualified professional, which will help insure the system is ready to operate safely and use the fuel efficiently. Many people use supplemental heating appliances to curb cost and waste – such as wood stoves, pellet stoves and kerosene space heaters – but the use of those also increases the risk of fire or dangerous accumulation of carbon monoxide, according to the New Hampshire Association of Fire Chiefs. Getting a routine check of your heating system every year is very important.