And while more electric cars might be zipping down local roads in the future, so might DwellGreen’s “Green Squad” cars as they move from house to house, conducting home audits. The Sarasota company—which officially got off the ground in May—is already catching the attention of homeowners who are looking to retrofit their homes for energy efficiency.

John Lambie, who has more than 35 years of experience in green building, came up with the concept for the company. “He had the idea of doing a holistic analysis of an entire building,” DwellGreen President John Ferrari says. “A lot of folks were looking at houses from one slice.” Local green builder MyGreenBuildings’ co-owners Steve Ellis and Grant Castilow came on board because they had been receiving more and more phone calls from curious homeowners who wanted advice on how they could bring environmentally friendly technology to their dwellings.

DwellGreen offers homeowners a $299 home audit, during which specialists look at all areas of the structure, including energy consumption, water balance and air quality. They ask homeowners a few questions and combine their hard calculations with soft data to provide the customers with a full home report and prioritized recommendations on how they can retrofit their homes, which they can access online. DwellGreen offers homeowners names of approximately three to five contractors who may then upload their bids for work to the customer via their DwellGreen HomePort, while being accountable to DwellGreen for the quality of their work. Homeowners can even scan their documents and upload them to the portal so they have a central location where all information is stored. “The service provider likes it because they get a snapshot of all the existing infrastructure of that house,” Ferrari says. DwellGreen also provides an online community where users rate their experiences with specific contractors. The company sends emails to consumers letting them know, for example, when their air filters need changed and what the specs are (and coupons from home improvement stores to help with the cost) and provides information home buyers can access regarding new homes on the market. It’s the new millennium virtual experience for the eco-conscious homeowner. —L.Downey