Salary
Average Salary: $67,280
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,808,805
If your intuition tells you green jobs are growing, you're right. Not only do many pay well, but employers get tax credits for creating positions that make a company more energy-efficient (source). That's great news for your budding career as an energy auditor.
The average salary of an energy auditor is $67,280 per year, which is significantly higher than the average household in the U.S. (source). Talk about green, right? It's not professional-athlete or movie-star money, but it's a good income from start to finish.
When they're just starting out, energy auditors make about twenty dollars per hour, or around $40,000 a year (source). Considering you need little schooling for this career, that's not bad at all. Some careers require at least a four-year degree and start at a much lower salary (hello, social workers and teachers).
If you hang in there for a while and show your ability to save a company money, you could be earning over $100,000 per year by working for the federal government (source). Energy auditor jobs with the federal government and in the private sector pay better than those with state and local governments.
There are also differences in pay, and in the number of available jobs, depending on where you live, because—here's a shocker—areas of the country that see the most extreme weather are the areas where energy auditors are needed the most. The more energy is needed, the greater chance you have to save your employer some cold, hard cash.