Tips for Green Building

For the past 30 years homeowners have been remodeling for various reasons to include, increased space, aesthetics, child safety, or just an overall improved quality of life.

Back in the 70's Americans experienced the revelation that our country and citizens had become too dependent on foreign oil. As long as the oil embargo endured, Americans sought out ways to reduce their energy consumption which included retrofitting their homes.

The United States Department of Energy introduced a solar research program which focused on reducing building energy and consumption. It was determined that we indeed knew how to reduce energy consumption in homes and in home building. If we had kept building energy efficient solar homes we could have saved the equivalent of the amount of oil we were importing from middle eastern countries by now.

Eventually oil prices began to come down. Unfortunately, this diminished the interest and emphasis on creating and sustaining energy efficient lifestyles. The tax benefits and credits for utilizing solar energy expired back in 1985. The entire solar industry contracted as a result.

Asians and Europeans assumed the quest and continued down the path to energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption in virtually all sectors. As a result, their countries are among the global leaders in energy reduction. America, the sleeping giant, is finally awakening again.

We've come full circle as a nation and as a society and we find ourselves crossing the same bridge again, however the stakes are much higher now. According to oil experts we have already exhausted more than one half of all the oil in the world. The balance of remaining crude oil is further underground and therefore more difficult to access.

Offshore oil reserves are farther out to sea and the oil is more chemically complex which creates unique challenges. Essentially these challenges create difficulties that inevitably make oil more expensive. Oil will eventually become too expensive to utilize.

All fossil fuels are becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain. Our country now imports most of our natural gas. The world demand for coal from China is also causing costs to rise. Now that we've considered the ramifications and global impact of burning fossil fuels, we've finally faced the realization that we can no longer bank on fossil fuels to sustain our power requirements for the future.