Americans still haven’t lost their taste for living large, at least when it comes to housing.

The latest Census Bureau statistics show that the average new American home got a little bigger in 2011 — just by 88 square feet over 2010, but still a surprise given the poor housing market. Housing experts say this may be a little misleading, because the housing market is so bad that only rich people are building houses — and rich people are more likely to build big.

Still, this underscores one of the biggest challenges we face on energy: We’ve spent decades building bigger and bigger houses, and more space means more energy.

Residential use accounts for roughly one-fifth of all the