Monday, January 24, 2005

Smartly Saving Money While Saving The Planet

Ultimately, those who learn to conserve and use earth friendly alternate energy strategies will emerge as the leaders of the future. Even though big business rules the mainstream marketing in the US today some people arel finding cheaper and smarter ways to live. Currently there arebetter approaches to energy usage emerging that are clearly the path of the future, both economically and politically. Clearly some are working to insure this country remains a progressive world example.

One example of a smarter approach to our energy consumption can be found in the recent issue of The Mother Earth News magazine. There potential new home builders will find information on super efficient energy wise homes that the average person can afford today. In fact they are looking for participants.

Super-efficient (“Net-zero”) solar homes are now available that reduce monthly energy bills 50 percent to 70 percent compared to comparable conventional homes. Today, anyone can have a zero-energy home by paying, upfront, roughly 10 percent to 20 percent more than the cost of a traditional home for renewable-energy technology, which generally has a payback in energy bill savings of about 20 to 30 years.”
“Net-zero-energy means the homes are super-efficient, with much of their electricity produced by rooftop solar panels; they draw electricity from the grid at night or on cloudy days, but overall they generate at least as much energy as they consume each year.”

“Jeff Christian, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Buildings Technology Center, has been studying energy efficiency in homes for more than 30 years, and he wants to make zero-energy homes affordable for everyone. To do so, he needs real-life data from homeowners so his team can refine and improve the homes’ engineering and cost efficiencies. To that end, he hopes to organize a mass purchase of these types of houses: “If we can get a few thousand people who will all order houses at the same time — not all with the same size and floor plan, but the same efficiency principles and materials applied to each, it would add some economies of scale and help us bring the unit cost down,” Christian says. “From a research standpoint, it would be immensely valuable to get the feedback about what works and what doesn’t work from homeowners who really care about these issues.”
If you would like to learn more, send an e-mail to Jeff Christian.
You might want to consider an efficient, money saving, new home like the ones mentioned above before rising energy prices get out of hand.




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