One bit of advice I have, as someone who does a lot of smart home projects, and has priced several.
Show me the savings and make it make sense.
Some people are hardcore and will spend a ton of money to make their home greener, but more people have to worry about where the money comes from and goes to.
For example, my house was built in early 90s and has like 7 of 8 foot tall picture windows, not low E. I talked to a company about replacing the windows, and they came out and did a really awesome demo, with a UV heat lamp and a sample and showed how heat came through our window and didn’t go through theirs. And that it would lower my energy bills every month.
Great, how much? Calculator comes out. “$99,000”
So while it’s great that I can save almost $50 a month on air conditioning, but I won’t be alive to see that investment pay for itself. We ended up going with solar tint, which saved less monthly, but only cost $800 so it paid off in about a year and a half.
Similarly I had an idea for a self priming hot water fixture. Idea was, you ever turn the hot water on and go do something while you wait for it to get hot? How much water does it waste? The thought was, this adds a button, you hit it and it runs until the temp sensor trips, then it turns off automatically. Saves water, and you can hear when the water is up to temp.
But a gallon of water is pretty cheap, (for now) and so unless you could get the price down to something very cheap, it wouldn’t make sense financially.
My personal rule is, if I’m not planning to move, an energy project needs to pay off in less than 10 years. If I know I’m moving in a few years, then it needs to pay for itself before I move.
Solar is right at that mark, with installation being the biggest part. EVs absolutely pay off in that time frame, but only if you’re already planning to replace your existing car. If you’re remodeling a room and pulling down the drywall, spray foam insulation is too expensive still BUT, the biggest benefit of spray foam comes from sealing air, so buy a case of Great Stuff and seal the seams/corners of each pocket before putting your regular fiberglass In, it makes a significant difference.
Along the lines of ‘makes sense if you’re replacing’ is high efficiency air conditioners. If yours works, you’ll never save enough over the life of the unit to justify the cost. If you have to replace it, do the numbers, it makes sense to go more efficient usually, but not MOST efficient. When we replaced ours 8 years ago, 14 SEER was the minimum, but 16 SEER was only a little more, and up to 24 SEER. The best value/roi was 16 SEER dual stage AC and dual stage blower, anything more efficient didn’t recover the cost in 10 years, which is the warranty period of most ACs.
If you can’t make it probably pay off in a reasonable amount of time, your best bet is to buy a congressman and get them to mandate it for new construction. Looks like it’s cheaper than you think.