An Air Tight Envelope is Important(to a house) Too

Not sure that staying put and going green is going to be that easy. Was researching that how air tight your home is, is a major concern because even if you go "green" in heating and cooling that you could still use too much energy, even if it's renewable. So now I have to figure out how air tight my home is, and then what exactly the new windows are galvanized with, and where they are placed to decide what needs to be changed, fixed, filled in, and so on before we even try to change things to a renewable energy source. Whats the use of getting different heating and cooling source if it's just going to seep out our walls. I though that having a brick house would be beneficial, but now I'm finding out it's not that much of an insulator unless I'm in the mid-west or south-west, where temperatures change dramatically from day to night. Here in Maryland it's not much help as the temperature is usually only a few degree different. I was looking into cotton insulation as it has a high R value and low environmental impact both in the home air quality and the manufacturing, but not sure if we are going to change to that yet, as I want to do more research.
Okay, I admit that going green and off-grid sounds great but now that we are trying to plan what needs to be changed first it's a lot more involved then changing our energy source and planting trees and shrubs to help. Not sure how long this is going to take. Our original timetable was a little over two years depending on finances, now I would be happy to finish in under five. Hopefully some of the tax breaks will increase and maybe the cost will go down so I can speed it up and get pros to do more. We'll see what happens. I may be a little discouraged right now, but I refuse to give up!