Too big to be "Green"?
Can a huge house, however efficient, really be green? This question has dogged several prominent eco-minded people who live large, including former vice president Al Gore, who has a mansion located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville that has been reported consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year.
More recently in ultra-green Berkeley, California, controversy has surrounded a prominent software designer / philanthropist who’s donated millions to environmental groups and currently has plans to build a sleek 6,478-square-foot house plus an attached 10-car garage which comes in at over 10,000 square feet.
The proposed project has enough green features to score 91 on the Berkeley Scale that calls anything over 60 green, but the neighbors think it’s too big to be green calling it “greenwashing” and “absurd” that a house that large could ever be classified as green.
Does size matter?
There is little basis for the claim that it is better to have a large house built with green materials than a small conveniently built home that uses more conventional materials. Energy modeling shows that a 1,500-square-foot home with poor insulation can still use less energy than a house twice its size with good insulation
According to an article in E-Magazine, a 3,000 square foot house uses 40% more energy than a 2,000 square foot house. So why is a 4,600 square foot McMansion considered green? Because it has an Energy Star rating that states it uses 15% less energy than a comparable conventional house. It’s a perfect demonstration of the battle between two major trends in American housing. In the past few decades, houses have gotten greener, but they’ve also gotten bigger too, leaving lingering questions: Is super-sized housing defeating conservation efforts? Can McMansions truly be green?
Even funnier > I wonder how much they paid the “green” certified monster to attest to their eco-friendly home… my guess > probably more than the cost of a normal family’s energy bill for several years! Capitalism… you gotta love it. Like earlier comments… Mother Earth is just going to shake us off like a bad case of the fleas!
Green! Like my shirt on St Patricks’ day…
Allow the homeowner to sell excess electricity back to the utlity and let the market go green, with money. Thermal for your heat, solar for your hot water and a bit of juice and off peak selling it back to SCE&G. Ah utopia!?!
Now that health care has passed and after the banking reforms I see a new one “cash for water heaters”. Oh did’nt they already do that one with energy credits?
All fooling aside, these larger homes should be provided and allowed “green” certifications. In many regards, the home is probably way more efficient than many track homes. It is commendable that this buying group engage very smart people to focus on these challenging issues. Think of them as “early adopters.” It will not be long until these ideas trickle down to the mass markets. Shouldn’t this make us ALL better off?