Vacation Home Energy Research

The Sopris Foundation's concerns about maintaining vital community in the small towns of the West, led us to study the local occupancy: vacation home owner ration in Aspen.?
We learned that 60% of town is owned by 2nd homeowners, 20% is affordable workforce housing, and the remaining 20% is in the free market.

From here we wondered, how much energy is used to power homes that sit vacant about 280 days a year?
So we commissioned Rick Heede at Climate Mitigation Services to perform an audit of the energy use of unoccupied homes.

To read our study, click here

To read the executive summary, click here.

To read the Aspen Daily News story, click here.

To read Piper Foster's Headwaters News commentary,? "The Architecture of Finance, not Home"? click here

We do not want to vilify second homeowners or negate the valuable contribution to community made by those who can only spend part of the year in our town; we do want to draw attention to the erosion of a housing marketplace for locals, and point out the opportunity for energy efficiencies in large, mostly unoccupied homes.

Piper Foster | Sopris Foundation | 303 E ABC | Aspen, CO 81611 | (970) 925 2521 (o) | (970) 925 2104 (f)