Why not have the heating bill tell you if you're using too much energy? Most heating bills report how much gas or electricity you used last month compared with a year ago. A lot of them also report heating degree days (how far and how long the temperature veered below 65 degrees over the course of the month). But this pair of numbers isn't very helpful. Together they don't tell you whether you need to upgrade your insulation. There's a better way to answer this question. Just tell people how much energy they used that month compared with other people in similar-size homes. In many cities (including our own New Haven), the square footage of each house is publicly available—so the gas company could calculate the energy per square foot for each house and display the information on each month's bill. Further helping you out by doing the math, it could report energy consumed (in BTU) per square foot per degree day.
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