Where's the Communication?

In historic preservation there is no topic where disconnect and lack of cooperation is more profound than in the field of climate change and energy. Very simply put, The National Park Service (NPS) has been has almost no input or stance when it comes to these issues. In general, responsibility for building efficiency rests with the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and their joint Energy Star program. Even so, the Department of the Interior (DOI) through the NPS’s Technical Preservation Services branch (TPS) and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) embodies the U.S. Government’s most significant concentration of expertise on the material science of existing buildings. The Secretary’s Standards serve as the manual for what changes get made to America’s millions of older and historic buildings which includes retrofitting for energy efficiency. Why is it then that NPS has no formal communication with the DOE, EPA or Energy Star programs on building retrofit? For that matter, why haven’t preservation groups spent any time coordinating or forging relationships with the DOE like they do with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (that has failed to gain significant national attention)? Notice how fashionable the notion of Energy Star rated and "LEED certified" has become in the field of architecture, yet  the ACHP, NPS, and Secretary of the Interior have failed to even discuss or implement a policy that they could use to capitalize on in the same way. In the future I feel that it just may be that the Department of Energy is going to have more to say about the fate of historic buildings than the other "established" preservation groups, and that may not be such a bad thing.