Rebates for going green
Posted on | September 10, 2008 |
Hi everyone, things have been crazy busy and we haven’t had much to report in terms of progress on the house. This weekend, however, we’re meeting with Monica, our designer to review the latest designs, plans and other documents, so I’ll have tons to share following that meeting.
For now, we’re spending time reading more about passive solar house design theory, and I’ve begun research into what sorts of rebates are available for designing and constructing a green building. I met with a colleague today who works in the industry and he doesn’t believe that there would be any government financial incentives for passive solar houses. They have to be more active systems with an associated cost. Since passive solar houses generally don’t cost any more to build than a normal house, you simply re-arrange the use of these materials to better take advantage of the sun’s power. No active systems, pumps or solar panels are required.
I find this surprising. In an age of increased green awareness, if I can take my fossil fuel consumption from 5,000+ litres of oil a year to 0, shouldn’t there be an incentive to get more people off of fossil fuels? Don’t get me wrong, we’ll be doing this whether there are rebates or not, but it would be nice if there was some form of incentive program to get more people to consider this sort of design.
As Jeremy at 360 Winnett found out, the rebates program generally favour retrofits and aren’t generally well informed.
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