Thanks to all of you who came to our Holistic Energy for the Modern Desert Home Lecture and Tour yesterday! A special thanks to those of you who signed our “Be A Better Neighbor” pledge to use less energy. We hope everyone had good time, learned something, and left encouraged by the options you have to reduce your dirty power consumption.
Reflecting on the day’s events, we wanted to first say how impressed we were with the large turn out and also, how poignant and sophistication your questions were. It’s clear that we are not alone here at HPE on our quest for energy conservation and lower energy bills. That is encouraging, so thank you. But the moment that stood out the most for us was the reflection by the legendary architect William Krisel about the hard fact that we as a society have not only permitted heavy energy consumption in the past decades, but actually encourage it.
“We were encouraged to just put more air conditioning, more electric heat, more energy, and they gave you a rating of a silver medal, or a bronze medal, or a gold medal if you used more. So the houses were designed so that you did use more. But the attitude was that it didn’t pay you to do anything energy wise…. so you were discouraged, not encouraged to conserve energy, and now we are paying the price and thanks to Nate we’ve got people who are educating people to be aware of that.”
Master Architect William Krisel, speaking at the HPE Event 2011
Thank you Mr. Krisel for telling us the way it was. Your acknolegement that we as a society got it wrong, will no doubt help countless others in reassessing their attitudes about power consumption.
Cheap endless energy is a myth from the past, so please don’t live today as if it’s a reality. We are facing rising energy prices and are watching as the world scrambles to keep up with the rising demands. Environmental effects and the costs of getting the fuel to run the generators are at crises levels and without a serious change is only going to get worse.
We have the answers. As consumers, as builders, as architects, as citizens we all have the power to significantly reduce our consumption by 20, 30, 40% very easily. Add your own Point of Use Solar Power and you can run your home for 80-90% less money and use a fraction of the power.
There are rebates and tax incentives to help you. We are here to help you. Energy Upgrade California (energyupgradeca.org) has been created to help you navigate the rebates, the contractors, and the many energy saving ideas. Why? Because the crises is real! The days of endless energy are gone, and we all need to change. As Mr Krisel said, “We are now paying the price.”
Live and learn. And change. Please.
