For almost 30 years homeowners have been remodeling their homes to improve the aesthetics, increase space, make the home more kid-friendly or to just raise their quality of life. The 1970s were a wake up call that the US was becoming too dependent on foreign oil. As long as the oil embargo lasted Americans were interested in reducing their energy use and retrofitting their homes. The US Department of Energy created a solar program and researched how to reduce building energy use. I was privileged to be part of that process. We knew then how to reduce energy in homes to the extent that if we had kept building more energy efficient and solar homes we would have saved the equivalent of the amount of oil we import from the middle east by today.

Alas, as oil prices came down and life returned to “normal” the interest in energy efficient homes went away. In 1985 the tax credits for solar expired and the solar industry withered on the vine. The Europeans and the Japanese took up the cause and continued to reduce energy use in all sectors and are the global leaders today. We are just waking up again.

As a society we now find ourselves at the same crossroad only it is much more real this time. The oil companies are telling us we have already used ½ of the known oil reserves on the planet. The second half is deeper underground, further out to sea or more chemically complex like the tar sands in Alberta. All that adds up to inevitably more expensive oil. We will never run out, it will just become too expensive to burn. Oil is just the bell weather. All other fossil fuels follow the price of oil. We are now a net importer of natural gas and the global demand for coal, especially from the Chinese, is driving the price up. Once we account for climate change impacts from burning fossil fuels, globally we will realize that we can’t bet our futures on fossil fuels to power our lifestyles.

Our country made a decision in November 2007 that it was time for a change. We have placed great hope in Obama and his administration to help us get out of the myriad problems we face globally. At the center of this challenge is energy. There is a lot of talk about the new “green” economy. Whether it is renewable energy, green jobs, green buildings or recycled content paper, there is a new imperative to turn to the road less taken at this particular cross road. That means all of us.

I lived in Washington DC for 16 years. That is long enough to know that Washington doesn’t change things. WE change things. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is a daily decision by each American. This is particularly true for our homes. We know how to reduce our energy use by 50% in each home without spending and arm and a leg. We have 120 million homes to retrofit to become more energy efficient while reducing our monthly cost of living. I call this “futureproofing” your home.

Only by retrofitting our homes, one at a time, will we start to stem the hemorrhaging of $700 billion per year we are sending to foreign counties to feed our oil addiction. One house at a time turns into one neighborhood at a time. Neighborhood by neighborhood we turn our communities around and begin to disengage from the lost tax revenue that spending money on energy creates. A dollar not spent on energy gets spent on books, dinners out, our kid’s supplies and toys. This in turn becomes sales tax revenue for our communities and pays for firemen, policemen and the civil servants that make our lives possible. As each community starts to get healthier again, community by community we improve our state’s self-reliance. State by state we change our nation. This is the only way change happens.

Washington DC can inspire and pump borrowed money into the economy, but it is us and our families that make change sustainable. Within a year of entering World War II, 40% of America’s produce was grown in “Victory Gardens”. Families across the country turned their yards into gardens and it is what kept America fed. There was no federal program mandating people to do that. It was just the right thing to do and American spirit and ingenuity allowed our parent’s generation to endure the war. We turned auto plants into tank and aircraft factories and became the supplier to the allied forces for hardware and equipment. We know as a country how to make rapid changes. Our parents and grand parents remember. It is literally in our genes.

Now is the time to take on this new green initiative. If we each do something, as small as it may seem, and millions of us do it, we can start to turn the tide. It emboldens others to do the same and supports Washington’s initiatives to get this country back on its feet. There is no time to lose and each month that goes by makes it harder to accomplish this monumental feat of weaning ourselves off of our fossil fuel addiction.

Come explore our website to find out how to take your first steps into energy independence.
 

David Johnston
www.greenbuilding.com

How much more will it cost is always the first question from someone new to the field. The answer will always be: “It depends”. A comparable question is “how much does a car cost?” Is it a Kia or a Mercedes? What year is it?

Green homes built over the last 15 years have proven that it doesn’t’ have to cost more to build green. The major variables are typically; what is the experience of the architect/builder, how early in the design process were green building features incorporated, what is the source of the green materials, and how green or energy efficient doesthe design team want the home to be?

The learning curve for architects and builders is the greatest variable. Experience has shown that the first green home a builder builds is the most expensive often 3-5% higher than conventional construction costs. Trade contractors often increase their prices for unfamiliar products or approaches. Their second house is 2-3% more because the learning curve has informed their process. The third house is often back to the cost of conventional homes they built in the past. Part of this learning curve is to incorporate green design early in the process. To make the home as energy efficient and cost effective as possible the house needs to be sited so that the majority of windows face south. Passive solar heating can reduce heating bills by 30-50% with little or no additional cost.

Some green materials may not be available in the region immediately. Shipping costs can make non-local materials much more expensive than traditional products. Typically, however, as green building programs are adopted in local markets around the country, lumber yards and green building product suppliers come into the area to meet the new demand. With greater volume of use the prices go down.

How green or energy efficient the house is, dictates increases in first costs. When energy improvements are involved, costs are really investments. Money spent on energy improvements reduce monthly utility bills. This yields a return on investment for those improvements. For example, if the energy improvements add $5000 to the initial cost of the house and the owners get a 30 year mortgage at 5%, the monthly increase in the mortgage payment is $26.84. If those improvements reduce monthly bills by $28.00, the owner accrues a monthly return on investment from the first month. The faster energy prices rise the greater the ROI. It is a pretty safe bet that energy prices will continue to rise over the life of the home making energy investments in a home one of the best investments you can make today.

David Johnston
GreenBuilding.com

I think America is dependent on the expectation that someone else is going to fix our problems. Now that we have Obama in office, he’s going to figure it out and the government is going to take on big bad industry and big bad Wall Street and the government is going to fund solar and fund wind and fund the solutions that bring us into a greener economy than what we have. All we have to do is be supportive of the government and we will get the benefits of their largesse.

The whole equation needs to be flipped on its tail. In my world of having lived in Washington, DC for 16 years and done a lot of work through the federal government, my experience is that government follows, people lead. And that green building, my field, has been a result of consumer demand. It has not been a result of tax credits and rebates and incentives, but people have made the choice that living in a green home makes more sense for their family. As we look at the big picture of energy, our collective energy use, the $700 billion dollars that we export to counties that don’t like us very much, it all comes down to individual decisions. One car at a time, one trip at a time, aggregated into this enormous demand for fossil fuels of all kinds. If we are not taking our American heritage seriously, to “live free or die”, on an individual level, then we will never get to a level, the scale of change that we need to get to. It is up to us to improve the insulation in our homes, put solar on our homes; it is up to us to drive wisely. It is up to us to figure out, from our own lifestyle what makes the most sense, from a personal perspective, what is in it for me, as well as the health of the country’s economy, why should we as a country wean ourselves off of imported oil?

The biggest obstacle for people taking personal responsibility has been that we have grown so entitled as a culture. We have insurance companies that take care of our health so that we don’t have to manage it, We have public agencies that take care of our safety so that we don’t have to be prepared, as people do in many developing counties. People take responsibility for their personal safety and security. We are habitualized to flipping a switch and having something happen, to turning on a faucet and having water come out, so our habits are based on very antiquated policies and pricing structures… water is virtually free in most of America, and so kids never learn the value of water. They turn on the faucet and let it run, we wash dishes and let the faucet run….

We live in a magical reality because someone else has figured it out. But in the days of more than abundant water, in the days of more than abundant forests, in the days of cheap energy, we didn’t have to think about these things. We’ve been spoiled for entire generations. I was born in 1950 when television started and we already had switches that controlled everything and faucets that worked all the time. All of my adult life everything has always worked. The wonderful and tragic consequence of that is that we’ve had really good, abundant lives in America. The tragic quality is that it’s been on the backs of the rest of the world. So, as 4% of the world’s population use 25% of the world’s resources. Energy, water, materials. And because you cannot see it from our houses, most Americans are oblivious of that fact but the rest of the world is poignantly aware of it. It makes us the ugly giant in the room. We have to come to terms with ourselves on an individual basis, on a family basis, a community basis and really look at what do we need vs. what do we want.