These are my opinions of what I would expect in a good energy audit.

Review of bills and comparison to others and to degree-day data
Blower door tests
Thermal imaging to identify leakage points
Test of house pressure under various conditions
Tests of duct system balance (no pressurization or depressurization of individual  rooms)
Measurement of heat loss (btu per degree day)
Calculation of furnace efficiency
COP measurement of geothermal system and comparison to manufacturer's specs
Before and after results for most of the above
Ventilation rate (air changes per hour) using tracer gas
Identification of sources of phantom electrical usage
Change recommendations and estimated payback for each

What would you expect to pay for such a "good energy audit" of a typical 3-4 bedroom American house?

I'll take a wild guess and say $895 (as a willing to pay value) for such an in-depth audit. I am aware that many of the auditors make their money on the changes they recommend. Ie, "you need more insulation and we can do it for $5000". But I would tell them that they aren't going to get any other business from me (ie, avoid any conflict of interest).

The company I used last summer prices on size of house.  Under 2,000sqf was $350 (my GSHP Installer picked up $200 of it, so net = $150).
It took almost 2 hours, the guy even found a roof leak at one of the vent stacks.  They do not fix any of the findings.  It's better to get if done in the winter or when it's really hot.  You need a good delta between inside air and outside for the infrared thermo readers to work.

As one who does energy consulting professionally, let me throw in my 2 cents. I'm an independent consultant who doesn't do the contracting work - my loyalties are with my clients. The only thing I do is home energy analysis and a building science consulting.

I've discussed this question in depth with my colleagues in the business. Some are general contractors who have taken on energy auditing as a side business. One was a GC for 30 years before becoming a home inspector then an energy auditor. I'm an engineer/entrepreneur - I wanted to put my technical skils into helping consumers. So the background is varied but at a high level.
How much is our service worth compared with other trades? Are we worth as much as a plumber? Electrician? Carpenter? HVAC technician? House Painter? Depending on how you answer this, you could say we're worth anything from $20-$150/hr. I personally charge $75/hr, which is less than the going rate of most of the trades listed above. Electricians, plumbers and HVAC companies in my area charge north of $100/hr. I've been told by clients and colleagues that I undercharge based on the quality of work and my background. But let's take that as a starting point.
During a job, I'll do some of what you describe in the initial posting. IR before and after blower door testing, full visual inspection from crawl spaces up to attic and exterior. Depending on the situation, I may or may not check pressures in each room.

I will also do combustion testing, where appropriate. This process in itself can take 1-2 hours to do properly because the testing protocol requires playing with house pressures, opening and closing doors, waiting for furnaces/water heaters to heat up and cool down, etc.

I do NOT do measurements for a full home energy model. This is required by some programs and I acknowledge that it can be useful in some situations. However, in reviewing my jobs, very few would have benefitted from this because it wouldn't have changed my recommendations.

The job takes an average of four to five hours on-site for 2000-5000 SF homes, even when doing an abbreviated combustion test and no home measurements.

After the job, it takes 1-2 hours to review and annotate the images and create a summary thermal report. This is autogenerated by the IR camera software so most of this time is in reviewing each of about 50+ thermal images.
Then comes the actual report generation. I've got this streamlined so that I can reuse much of the generic content, but the report is still customized to the individual's home. It include sample images from their home, a description of the specific problems found, prioritized lists of action items. Where available, the utility bills will be analyzed and normalized to the heating degree day data for their area. Blower door air change rates are calculated etc. This process takes a minimum of 4 hours and it's not uncommon for me to work 8 hours on an analysis.

Keep in mind, that this doesn't include any time for energy modeling/Manual J calculations or the like. I have done this and between the added measurements of the house, entering the data and running through the simulations, this is a 5+ hour process. Others who do EnergyStar ratings requiring the same thing tell me that this is optimistic. But let's use that as a number.

Add in travel time. Typically round trip time is 1-2 hours.

So when the job is done, I've invested 7-8 hours, often more. This is excluding the energy model and represents a short time compared to others I've discussed this with. Let's call it 8 hours. That's $600, which is at the top end of the pain threshold for my clients. Most jobs I discount by an hour or two to maintain a price of <$600.

My colleagues in and out of the business note that I'm undercharging and that a consultant in any other field would charge at least $1200-$1500+ for the work output I produce. But I know that is far beyond the pain threshold for my clients, so I have to discount. Plus, there are contractors selling jobs for $250, so market pressure forces me to undervalue the work.
If we were to do a full job based on all the criteria you've outlined, it would have to be a $1500-$2000 job in order to make any money on it. At that price, we'd get no jobs. All of the consultants (i.e. non-contractors) that I've spoken to are similarly undervaluing their work because contractors who offer these jobs discount and just wrap the rest of the costs into their contracting jobs, adding a thousand to the cost. Even then, they say they're barely covering costs.

In reviewing your initial criteria, I see a few other things. Tracer gas testing, COP calculations, etc. Nobody I know does this. Occasionally I'll do COP calculation if enough data are there for a meaningful calculation, but usually, that's not feasible or accurate because even the energy modeling software has been shown to be 50% or worse accurate. So there's a lot of GIGO going on.

I agree that what it's worth, what reasonable pay for the work is and what people are willing to pay are out of sync. Some of these things are required for new homes - perhaps existing homes should also have some requirements. Or tax credits. Or some program to spread out the costs (to the homeowner, not the auditor).

Nice writeup, Tinoue. I've often thought about trying to market energy consulting services. I agree with the separation of recommending work vs contracting to do it since there is an avoidable appearance of conflict of interest otherwise.

I know from hearing of friends and neighbors exorbitant electricity bills that there is a great deal of low hanging fruit out there to be plucked in terms of energy conservation

It is clear that to do the job right one needs a fairly pricey suite of tools - IR, Blower door and Duct Blaster, PC, software, precision manometer. I have a nifty Testo that resolves to 0.01 inWC, but I don't think that would suffice to measure differential room pressures.

A homeowner would be well-advised to have a pro independently verify performance of the typical HVAC system, but what hack would tolerate being second-guessed on sizing, ductwork, and heat gain / loss issues.

I've toyed with the idea of performance-based contracting, more the norm in commercial / industrial settings, but haven't pursued it to the point of coming up with a residential biz plan. Performance-based contracting is the only transparent way to bridge the conflict-of-interest issue between identifying shortcomings and remedying them.

Residential performance based contracting is fraught with tricky metric issues. Suppose a family of four has $300 utility bills, which you manage to trim to $200 via various improvements, thereby earning your pay. Then the eldest kid graduates college, can't get a job, and moves back into the parents' house with a girlfriend and a state-of-the-art entertainment center; occupancy is up 50%, plug loads might double, and the energy consultant is stuck holding the bag trying to explain the material change in circumstances related to the move-in, which the homeowner might try to conceal...

A bit off topic, but relevant to the main idea, I think...

Do not forget the child that the two will be bringing home with them,  in addition to the entertainment center. Sorry of topic.

We are often confronted with the specifics of our residential design builds in terms of engineering.  We offer conductivity testing if paid for to set a design in stone.  If paid for being the key phrase.  Spending $5,900.00 for a residential project is just never a option that is selected.

Tinoue - you're very reasonable for what you provide. To me, energy audits that also include the contracting services are conflicts of interest - and I've seen many that are close to being sales pitches for services. It's unfortunate how the energy business is evolving. We do energy auditing as part of our geothermal "make ready" services because it's generally less expensive to add insulation than add geothermal capacity.

> Testo that resolves to 0.01 inWC

That's 2.5 pascals and about the limit - so worth checking with it (ie, if it reads .2 or higher it should be fixed).

Aside from this and other think tank enviroments, most folks speak of an interest to be energy wise but will pick the lowest bidder energy consultant.
I did a walk through for a city recently where the evaluator suggested ECM blowers on air handlers but neglected to notice that the June gas bill for a rec center was 60% of the January heating bill.
Turns out that the same 1 mil btu boiler heated the pool or the whole building.
Sure those energy smart blowers would save 100's of dollars every year.......
The evaluator's price was very reasonable.
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