That was the title of a 1971 hit song by the
Chi-Lites, written by the group’s lead singer, Eugene Record. It also may be one answer to the question of
how we can achieve a more sustainable system for powering our homes in the
future. You might think of it as taking
a small step backward to make a giant leap forward.
In the early days of America, settlers’ homes were heated
by fireplaces that were powered by wood from the surrounding forests. Light was provided by candles made in the
home from tallow. There were no central
utilities delivering light and heat to the homes in a village. Each homeowner was, in essence, his own
utility.
That model changed with the electrification of
America. In the 1880s the first power
generating stations were built. Within a
very short time, homes were wired and began using electricity for lighting,
heating and all sorts of appliances.
Today in the USA, about 68%
of electricity is generated from the burning of fossil fuels. The burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and
natural gas) contributes carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the
atmosphere, which most scientists believe are causing undesirable changes to
the earth’s climate. To reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, utilities would have to switch from burning fossil
fuels to alternative sources, such as by wind, solar, hydro or nuclear. Existing homeowners in states with electric
choice programs can switch to utilities offering power generated by these
alternative sources if they want to do their part to reduce global warming, as
described in my previous blog, “Everyone Knows It’s Windy.”
However, what if in the near future homes were built like
in the days of the early settlers with the concept that each was a fully (or
nearly) sustainable unit from a power standpoint? Instead of coming with fireplaces designed to
heat the home, they would come with individual power plants capable of
generating most, if not all, of the household’s electrical needs.
This is the thought I had after a recent visit to one of
my favorite Pittsburgh destinations, the Phipps
Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Phipps has been open to visitors just about
as long as we’ve had centralized electric utilities. However, over the past 10 – 15 years, Phipps
has been involved in a $23 million, multi-year project to upgrade and expand
its facilities. The Center
for Sustainable Landscapes is the centerpiece of Phase III of that
project. On its website, Phipps calls
the Center “one of Earth’s greenest buildings.”
The Center showcases many systems and techniques that can be incorporated
into new buildings, including residential homes. These include designing and constructing a
building to make it incredibly energy efficient, as well as installing
equipment to heat and cool the building using a ground source geothermal HVAC
system and to power it using photovoltaic panels and a vertical axis wind
turbine.
The technology for installing many of these features
already exists. For example, you could
request that the roof of your new house be covered with solar shingles,
and you could demand that a small
vertical axis wind turbine be included in the home’s design to
supply power to your homestead. If
enough new home buyers demanded that such features be incorporated into their
houses, or enough towns adopted building ordinances requiring these types of
systems, we could reduce the demand on centralized power plants and eventually
meet the entire demand for electricity from non-fossil fuel sources.
Tearing a page from the history books, we would be living
again like the original settlers in houses that independently produce the power
to light and heat our living spaces. And
that power would be sustainable, non-polluting and would not add to global
warming. For God’s sake, that certainly
would give more power to the people!
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