When you are an automotive engineer and you are designing a vehicle for maximum fuel efficiency, you use all the energy sources you can find. That’s why design engineers of hybrid vehicles tap the energy that gets wasted when a hybrids brakes are applied. Instead of converting the motion of the vehicle into wasted heat via the brake pads as ordinary cars do, hybrid vehicles have a small generator on each axle that converts the car’s kinetic energy into electricity. This electric power is then fed to the vehicle batteries.

In any internal combustion-powered vehicle, another source of wasted energy is the movement of the exhaust gases that exit the tailpipe. Using these strong gases to power automotive sub-systems isn’t a new concept as superchargers have been doing it for years. The way it works is the exhaust gases are used to spin a turbine that, in turn, drives fresh air into the vehicle’s engine. This allows more air-fuel mixture to be exploded in the cylinders which produces more engine power.

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This is good news regarding conservation and our push for energy independence.

U.S. homeowners will be able to get low-cost energy audits that rank a home’s efficiency on a scale of one to 10 and get federally insured loans for upgrades, under an Obama administration plan to be announced today.

With the new Home Energy Score, consumers will find out how their home compares with others and how much money they could save by adding insulation, sealing air leaks or doing other upgrades. Nine U.S. communities will test the score, similar to a miles-per-gallon label for cars, before it’s rolled out nationally next summer.

Information is power, and now consumers will be more informed about the energy efficiency of current homes and home they intend to purchase. This will breath more life into the market for green building materials and upgrades, and along the way our housing stock will become more energy efficient.

It will also be interesting to see how this affects the real estate market. Buyers will begin to insist on a Home Energy Score so they know how efficient their new home might be. I suspect sellers will be have an incentive to make the modest investments necessary to improve the score.