In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a push towards making homes more energy efficient by insulating better, getting rid of air leaks, better sealed doors and windows, using solar and wood heating, etc. Our local electric company used to do "energy audits" to recommend how to conserve power and had some promotional deals on adding insulation and more efficient HVAC units. As the energy crisis in those days eased up, some of those ideas fell by the wayside. Higher fuel prices may make it worthwhile to revisit some of those ideas.
One of the things that used to be done was they had this big fan that they would place in an exterior doorway to pressurize a house to see how leaky it really was. Apartments tended to be the worst because they assumed the tenants would pay the heating and cooling bills, and so they tended not to care as much about energy efficiency. I remember one HVAC engineer telling me that he wouldn't size an HVAC system for an apartment building without doing a blower door test because he never could assume how tight or leaky the apartment building would be.
As houses got tighter, then they weren't exchanging fresh air as much which has its own issues.
I don't know if you have an older home or a newer home much less how well insulated and sealed it may be. Perhaps there may be some inexpensive things you could do before winter to use less energy?
