Pink Floyd was rarely, if ever, wrong. But when it wrote “We don’t need no education” in its 1979 classic, “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II,” it clearly wasn’t referring to home owners.

Because, let’s face it: Home owners, left with few options to edify themselves outside of the home porn that HGTV serves up, definitely need to be educated in the ways of energy-efficient home building and retrofitting.

Worse yet, constructors – who tend to pay lip service to being green – often don’t introduce these options to their clients, either because they worry about sticker shock or perhaps because they assume home owners simply aren’t interested.

We’re left with a disproportionate desire among home owners for granite countertops and hardwood flooring as key elements of a reno, while the true difference makers – a tight envelope, energy-efficient building techniques and systems, and a general approach designed to reduce the home’s carbon footprint – are eschewed or ignored. 

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