Save money, do good: What's not to like?

Many Minnesota homes would benefit from an energy audit

Many Minnesota homes still have lots of room for energy savings.

"Any home built before 1970, there's no guarantee that there's any insulation in the walls," said Stacy Boots Camp, outreach coordinator for the Minnesota Center for Energy and the Environment.

The group helps homeowners cut their energy use. She says a quarter of Minnesota homes still lack sufficient insulation. And many that have enough insulation may still leak a lot of air.

"There's still hundreds of thousands of houses that could be better insulated. Probably, the main issue we see is the potential for air sealing," she said.

Plugging leaks can add up to real savings. CenterPoint Energy, for instance, says customers can cut their natural gas bills by 10 to 30 percent with aggressive conservation efforts. The utility has some 800,000 residential customers in Minnesota. CenterPoint says those households could save enough gas to heat about a quarter million homes for a year if they maximized their homes' energy efficiency.

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