My wife and I just bought a new home. Needless to say, because of the way I earn my living, the energy use of perspective places was at the top of my list of priorities. If a home didn't have double-paned windows, an efficient heating system and good insulation, I didn't even want to look at it. (Our new home doesn't look like the one pictured here which I found on Flickr iand was taken by johnrawlinson. But man is that place energy efficient. Check out more about it.)

If only one of those items needed to be upgraded though, I decided it might still be ok for us to look at the place more closely because investments in energy efficiency has been shown to increase property values by 2 to 40 times the initial investment cost according to this post at worldchanging.org.

During my research, I discovered another reason to feel good about buying a slightly less energy efficient home.

As a part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, people who make their homes more energy efficient can get a credit for up to 10 percent of the cost, up to $500 per household over the two years of the credit. A number of home improvement purchases can be claimed under this credit including exterior windows and skylights, metal roofs, insulation, HVAC systems and water heaters.

Although the amount of the credit isn't substantial (especially if we're talking about the outlay for new windows on an entire house), over time, these purchases pay for themselves in the form of lower heating and cooling bills and help the planet. And of course, the real reason we do things like this is to use less energy and help the planet, right?

Seriously, whatever your reason for improving the energy efficiency of your home, try to do it soon so you can take advantage of this credit. Congress didn't extend it so it expires Dec. 31.

Before you make your purchases, remember to check with your local utilities to see if they offer incentives for those upgrades. The Energy Star program has a great tool http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=rebate.rebate_locator for looking up local rebates on all sorts of products.

To find out more about what is eligible for the federal tax credit and what you need to claim it go to Energy Star's tax credit information page.