Home Energy Revolution

All but a small fraction of my household energy budget comes from renewable, CO2-neutral sources. The electricity arrives from photovoltaic panels (PV) on the roof, the heating from an electronically controlled pot-belly stove that burns corn kernels and warms most of my Takoma Park, Maryland home, and the hot water comes from a separate rooftop panel that converts sunlight to infrared heat.

You must be thinking I’m a very wealthy man to be able to afford such extravagant gadgets. Everyone knows that amazingly effective renewable energy technologies are out there. The problem is that average Americans – the very people who need to switch if we’re going to stop global warming – simply can’t afford them, right?

Wrong. In my case, I’m a hopelessly middle-class, self-employed writer with a four-year-old son. No rich uncle died and left my wife Catherine and me a large inheritance. We didn’t scrape together years worth of savings. We made all our energy changes abruptly, within the past six months, and now we’re spending the handsome sum of – get this – $38.83 per month to pay for them. And here’s the best part: Most of these planet-saving technologies are available and affordable right now for any homeowner willing to do a little bit of research, borrow a modest sum of money, and spend that money wisely.

It was January’s last bombshell findings of the UN- sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that motivated us to plot our home energy revolution. Disastrous planetary warming of up to 10.4 degrees by 2100 is doubly horrifying each time you look out at your innocent son playing whiffle ball with playmates destined to live until 2070. We knew the modest targets set by the Kyoto Protocol wouldn’t save the planet either. Most scientists believe the world’s CO2 emissions must drop a full 80% below current levels to stabilize climate change.

So that became our goal: to cut our household CO2 emissions by 80%. We developed a budget of $7500. Being of modest means, we had to borrow the money in the form of a home equity loan. Our very first investment was a book called Homemade Money, published by the Rocky Mountain Institute for people wanting to save money through improved energy use. The first step, we learned, was to eliminate unnecessary energy consumption and to use more efficiently the energy you can’t live without. So we switched to compact flourescent lightbulbs, bought an extremely high efficiency refrigerator, and began drying our clothes on a line. With these and other changes, we cut our electricity use 52% from 3760 kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2000 to an annual rate of about 1800 kWh.

It then became plausible to meet at least part of our newly trimmed energy demand with our own solar generation. And here’s where we encountered the first of several pleasant surprises: we could go solar, in a big way, even on a budget. We quickly learned that the state of Maryland offers grants of up to $3600 toward solar PV systems, plus a deduction of 15% of the cost of the system from your state income tax.

With a hefty grant in hand, we went shopping for solar panels and got another big surprise: a local solar advocacy group – the Virginia Alliance for Solar Electricity – was heavily discounting the price of panels thanks to a subsidy from the U.S. Department of Energy. Taking advantage of both programs and installing much of the system ourselves, we were able to realize our greatest dream: 36 solar panels on our roof generating 70% of our electricity.

Having tackled the big hurdle of electricity, we had almost half of our original $7500 budget still in hand to apply to our next big challenge: heating. We knew a typical U.S. household spends 44% of its energy budget heating and cooling the home. As for cooling, we get by with ceiling fans. But in winter, we spend up to $200 a month heating with natural gas. We had to find a new source of heat.

But what? A small company in Minnesota answered the question. 12 years ago, ex-farmer Mike Haefner, president of American Energy Systems engineered the first ever corn-burning stove designed to heat modern homes. Sales were flat until last year, when rising fuel prices and growing concerns about the environment increased company sales 500%. This small, easy-to-install stove easily heats a 2000 square foot home (ours is 1600 sf) and can accommodate a thermostat. The stove can store up to two days worth of corn in a side bin and self-loads the corn with a low-energy electric auger. All you have to do is set the stove to the heating level you want and enjoy the radiant heat.

Burning corn contributes almost nothing to global warming. Like all plants, corn absorbs CO2 as it grows, and, with this stove, the corn burns so efficiently that the net CO2 released is negligible. Moreover, corn is cheaper than natural gas – we’ll save more than $200 per winter – and it’s easily purchased even by big-city dwellers at outlying feed stores. And studies show U.S. farmers can grow 10 times more corn than is needed to meet all of America’s energy needs.

Even after these purchases, we still had enough money to tackle our last major source of emissions: heating our water. And here we got lucky. Our solar contractor stumbled across a used solar hot-water system and sold it to us installed for $1000, and, we were able to deduct 15% of the cost from our state income taxes. thus, we closed out our expenditures at just over $7500. The solar system “pre-heats” the water for our natural gas heater. On sunny days, all of our hot water comes from the sun. On cloudy days, we get as much help from solar as we can and then the gas burners kick in.

So here’s the bottom line: Except for a little natural gas to cook and heat our water on really cloudy days, plus the small portion of our electricity that still comes from our local utility, we now contribute nothing to global warming through home energy use. Plus, we’ve reduced our estimated CO2 contribution from 19,488 pounds per year to just under 2010 pounds, a drop of almost 90%! If every household in the industrialized world were to make half of these changes, we would be well on our way to solving global warming.

We also do well by doing good. By conserving energy and switching to renewables, we save an estmated $578 each year. That’s $48.17 per month. Our monthly payment for the $7500 loan is $87. that sum will quickly diminish as energy prices continue to rise. In 10 years, when our loan is repaid, savings close to $1000 a year will go straight into our pockets. For now, our total out-of-pocket expense is less than $39 a month.

But surely such an abrupt switch form fossil fuels entails some hidden sacrifices? Actually, there are none. Yes, several times a week in the winter we have to reload the stove with corn, which takes about five minutes. Every two weeks we have to clean the stove: another 15 minutes. And since the stove radiates heat, a room can only be warm if its door is left open. Other than this, our lives are essentially unchanged.

Except for one more thing: We now live with greater hope for our son’s future and that of the whole planet. If we can make such big changes so quickly and for so little money, the rest of the world can do the same.

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FROM Co-op America Quarterly, a SustainableBusiness.com Content Partner