I get a lot of calls from people asking me about local market conditions for auditors and raters. Green employment is highly desired by many, of course – and even more so when people get laid off from work they didn’t enjoy doing in the first place. It gets them thinking. Some of the calls are from locals, but I get just as many calls nationally. Most of those are former St. Louisians planning on moving back home.

So, I thought I’d write a quick note about our local market conditions for anyone interested. Interested persons might first start, however, with my previous posts about business models, because market conditions have a lot do with whether or not you are going to be a “contractor” or a “consultant”.

Needless to say, these are merely my opinions. I could be right or wrong.

On a macro level, St. Louis has been hit hard by the “Great Recession” just like so many other places. Lay off announcements still appear in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch every week. So, in general, times are tough. There is always some new construction, but it is still greatly diminished. Like elsewhere, there are a lot of construction folk out of business. Thus, even if you are a rater, don’t count on much bread and butter there. There are some custom homes being built “green”, but from my point of view most of that effort is still supply driven, not demand driven. There is a lot of green marketing going on, with all the associated BS which that usually entails.

At that same high level, remember that the St. Louis metro area has some of the lowest utility rates in the nation. This, and the fact that our climate is actually relatively moderate, means that you won’t necessarily be able to rely much on “payback” as a sales tool. There are incentives at the Federal (tax credit) and State (rebates and a tax deduction) levels, and they certainly help; however, those incentives are usually a nice surprise for clients, not a motivator.

There is some auditing business for existing residential. Enough to make ends meet (for me, anyway), although I do know of a lot of auditors who are kept by their day job. They’re ready and waiting, but the business for most just isn’t there. If you’re going to be new in the market and have some savings to scrape by for a fair amount of time, you may do alright. I have always believed that there is always room in a market for really good people. I think that’s still true, even now. But only you can judge yourself in those terms.

What do you need to actually do business as an auditor? Missouri doesn’t license auditors, so have at it. (You may need to get a local business license, though.)

If you want to be on the Missouri Certified Energy Auditor list maintained by the Energy Center of Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources, you need two things: 1) Either be a certified HERS rater or a certified BPI Professional Building Analyst, and 2) insurance. Being on that list qualifies your customers for a Missouri Tax Deduction.

In the St. Louis metro area, if you want to be on the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) list, you need to be both a certified BPI Professional Building Analyst and a certified BPI Envelope Professional. The HPwES program is run by the EarthWays Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. In my humble opinion, the program is in some disarray. It doesn’t have much funding (it’s never had much funding for market development) and I don’t believe right now it’s running any training classes. Still, it’s a good group of people and worth making the connection. About one-sixth of my existing residential work comes from HPwES referrals off their website.

Having written all this, there are two items on the horizon that may make a huge difference. (Old-timers laugh because there has always seemed to be some great things “on the horizon”, but when oh when will they get here? In other words, in their minds, energy efficiency has more or less always been an industry poised to take off.)

First, there is PACE, or Property Assessed Clean Energy, working its way through the Missouri Legislature. This is a funding mechanism which should help immensely, in that money loaned to a home for energy efficiency or renewable energy improvements is paid off via a property assessment. This means that whoever owns the home at any given time (and who is reaping the operational benefits from energy efficiency or renewable energy) will be paying off the original loan. That’s huge. I, as an individual, will no longer be responsible for paying off the loan, the home will. I, for example, can move to another city with my job, etc. And because payback times are stretched out here in Missouri, that’s a big plus.

Also, the Home Star program making its way through Congress at the Federal level will also help, but mostly if you are a “contractor”, not a “consultant”. When that passes, you may see a lot of contractors move into the market, some of them big. If so, I expect all hell to break loose. $99 energy audits (apparently these are already occurring in S. California). “Little” local firms will be competing eventually with national firms, some of them with tremendous amounts of knowledge and experience in energy efficiency programs.

So there you have it. The market? Not great, not grim, and as always, forever hopeful.