Heating and cooling are half the home energy bill — and the 2024 RECS data has started to land
ENERGY STAR puts heating and cooling at almost half of the average household’s energy bill (>$900 a year). EIA’s 2024 RECS structural tables are out; fuel and end-use data arrive in 2027.
ENERGY STAR’s guidance for smart thermostats starts from a simple fact: for the average American household, almost half of the annual energy bill goes to heating and cooling — more than $900 a year. That is why the program maintains a certified list of smart thermostats, which must, among other things, drop into a low-power standby mode when idle and give owners equipment-use and temperature insight.
The federal baseline for how U.S. homes actually use energy is the EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The 2024 RECS is now rolling out: housing-characteristics data were collected in late 2024 and early 2025, the structural and geographic tables (by housing type, owner/renter status, year built, income, climate region and home size) have been published, and the fuels-and-end-uses tables — the part that answers “what does heating cost” by region — are scheduled for spring 2027.
What to do with that
Until the 2024 end-use data lands, the actionable number is still the heating-and-cooling share. A thermostat you actually schedule is the cheapest lever; a properly commissioned heat pump is the biggest one; and the order matters — fix the envelope and controls before you size generation. We’ll cover the RECS end-use release when EIA publishes it.
Sources
- ENERGY STAR — Smart thermostats (fetched Oct 2, 2026)
- EIA — Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) 2024 (structural tables released 2026; fuels & end uses due spring 2027)
Cut the heating-and-cooling line first.
Start with a pro-installed smart thermostat on SmartHouse; for solar and panel-level questions, SolarCentre is the network’s solar desk.