ZEROCARBON HOUSEBecoming ‘carbon neutral’ means you have neutralized the effect of your personal greenhouse gas emissions; your personal and household activities no longer contribute to the dangers of global warming.
On average, 25% of US and Canadian emissions come from our personal activities. The rest comes from industry, commerce, agriculture, oilfields, trucking, defense, and so on. So far, no one has developed a way to measure the carbon emissions of all the things we buy (cars, houses, food, stuff), which require energy to manufacture, ship, and package, so those emissions are not even included in that 25%.
In addition to striving to reduce your personal emissions, becoming carbon neutral at the household level is one way to exercise this responsibility.
In Scotland, the Zero Carbon House is a low energy demonstration project designed to show how renewable energy can create a unique living experience on a remote island in a severe climate. A holistic approach has been taken to eliminating household carbon emissions that would normally result from heating and powering the home, running the family car and growing and transporting food.
The house is based on a standard design from a timber frame company. Timber is a low embodied energy, renewable material that will be sourced from Scotland (where the house was designed) to minimize transportation costs and impacts.
The house will be constructed to very high levels of energy efficiency. Heating will be provided by an air-to-water heat pump serving a radiant heating system and providing domestic hot water via a heat store.
Power will be provided by two on-site wind turbines and can be stored in a Redox Fuel Cell system to even out fluctuations in generation and demand. Power can also be stored in the electric vehicle's battery system. A grid connection will be retained as backup but the power storage system will maximize the use of renewable energy on-site rather than exporting power to the grid. This improves the project economics as well as minimizing impact on the local electricity distribution network.
Zero carbon heat from the heat pump will augment passive solar collection in a doubly-insulated greenhouse to provide suitable growing conditions for a range of fruit and vegetables grown in a hydroponics system. The availability of fresh affordable food is a major concern on any remote island.
This project is being sponsored and supported by several entities in Scotland: Communities Scotland, EST Scotland and Shetland Enterprise. They feel this project addresses social economic and environmental issues that are of relevance to the entire planet.
The Zero Carbon House is designed to be duplicated. The project designers hope people everywhere can use it as a model – a way to see that living responsibly in the world is attainable.
See an illustration of the Zero Carbon House here: http://www.zerocarbonhouse.com/
Copyright © 2007