By Nate Berg
Green building and carbon-neutral living might seem like recent ideas, but engineer Jerry Yudelson has been in the environmentally friendly building business for 14 years. Today he directs a consulting firm in Tucson, Arizona, and his name is on a dozen books about green design. Before LEED certification (that’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, to us non-pros) was a glimmer in any architect’s eye, Yudelson was pushing for solar houses. And he still is. He offers his thoughts on where the field is headed, what new tricks are cutting energy use, and which technological leaps may yet take green homes mainstream.
Wired: You can hardly think of a green house without imagining solar panels. How has solar changed in recent years?
Jerry Yudelson: You’re getting solar a lot cheaper now. And it’s being incorporated into roof shingles, so you can actually have solar-powered roofs without putting on separate panels. You’ve got to put a roof on anyway, so if you can effectively make the roof itself a solar collector, you get two for one.
Wired: Bill Gates recently called rooftop solar “cute.” He seemed to think it was a rich person’s toy.
Yudelson: Production housing is where it’s getting interesting. The big home builders are starting to put on 2- or 3-kilowatt systems as a standard feature, and it’s just part of the price of the house. There’s no add-on cost. That’s a real breakthrough.
Wired: What about the systems that really run a house, like heating and cooling?
Yudelson: The real key is the windows. There’s some revolutionary nanotechnology that’s about to go into the glass—different kinds of coatings that make them five to 10 times more energy-efficient than double-paned windows. These windows are as energy-efficient as walls. READ MORE >>
via www.wired.com
