I received an email today from a company called Pure Energy Coach that left me marveling at how our industry is changing.

It was a newsletter promoting the company’s mission as “Coaching the future of America's home improvement industry with our grassroots approach to no-holds-barred audits, quality assurance inspections, home energy retrofits, and coaching, training and mentoring programs.” The main objective of the newsletter was to tout a five-day course designed for women who want to be residential energy auditors.

While I’m certainly not against having female auditors in the home performance industry, I am concerned about the level of expertise that anyone — man or woman — can attain in just five days. I believe the growing number of businesses and people seeking to quickly enter this segment of the industry may lead to some unfortunate consequences for contractors. So I am sounding the alarm that our industry is at risk if contractors don’t step up to the plate and become involved in home performance contracting.

The newsletter I received gave a brief description of the Women’s Energy Auditing Course and noted that, at the end of the training, students have the option to get certified as a BPI Building Analyst Professional qualified to “evaluate the appliances and heating/cooling systems for how to save energy.”

If contractors sit back, they may find themselves taking orders from an energy “expert” who has had a whole five days of training.