Zero-Energy Homes: A New Direction in Energy-Efficient Home Building

Image Gallery From bungalows to ranches to houses in urban and rural settings, most any home can become a zero-energy home. “Toward a Zero Energy Home” showcases 12 houses built for zero-energy living, and guides readers through the design process of these truly green dwellings. COVER: THE TAUNTON PRESS

The following is an excerpt from Toward a Zero Energy Home by David Johnston and Scott Gibson (The Taunton Press, 2010). This comprehensive home energy self-sufficiency guide explores the design of zero-energy, near-zero-energy, off-the-grid and carbon-neutral homes from start to finish, giving readers an unparalleled look at these emerging trends in environmentally friendly building. This excerpt is from the Introduction, “The Case for Zero Energy Houses.” 

The petroleum economy bared its teeth in 2008, and it wasn’t pretty. In mid-July, the cost of a barrel of crude oil reached an all-time high of $147, a 50 percent increase in just seven months and a threefold jump in three years. A few months later, as the world economy took a nosedive, prices dropped to less than $60 a barrel and gas prices dipped to nearly $2 a gallon. Heating oil customers in the Northeast who had locked in a winter’s worth of fuel at more than $4.70 a gallon looked wistfully at a cash price of less than $2.20. It was the most recent upheaval in our fossil fuel economy, and it almost certainly won’t be the last.

The cost of oil has a huge impact on every corner of the economy, in part because we continue to use so much of the stuff. Americans manage to burn more than 20 million barrels of petroleum products a day. About 12 million barrels of that is imported, making us the world’s largest consumer. Until a few years ago, that didn’t seem to matter. Oil was relatively cheap, and the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s was long forgotten. Now it matters a great deal as the developing world competes for a bigger share of this limited resource.

All of this affects how much we pay for energy. But the cost of fuel oil or gasoline looks like small potatoes in comparison with the environmental consequences of burning the enormous quantities of oil, natural gas and coal we pull from the Earth. Climatologists link an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases to a steady rise in average global temperatures and a variety of climate changes, some of which may prove catastrophic. Carbon dioxide — a byproduct of burning hydrocarbons — is an especially noticeable culprit. Glaciers are melting. Weather patterns are changing, bringing bigger, more frequent storms to some regions and droughts and high temperatures to others. High energy costs and a lack of potable water could make some parts of the globe very difficult places to live in the future. Worse, climate changes are occurring faster than scientists had predicted only a few years ago.

What does building houses have to do with any of this? A lot. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 40 percent of all primary energy consumed in the United States and 70 percent of the electricity produced by U.S. power plants goes directly to commercial and residential buildings. By some estimates, buildings are responsible for 48 percent of the carbon released into the atmosphere.