September 2022 • Zero Carbon Home

In my experience with a Tesla, what is most important about EVs is not the car itself (all of them are good, as this presentation shows) but the availability of level 3 (fast charging) stations. Level 2 is perfect for home-based overnight charging or charging at your office or work site. But I add about 40 miles of range for every hour of level 2 charging. Hence it is not practical for driving long distances – it would take 5 hours to add 200 miles of range. On a level 3 charger (often called fast chargers, Tesla calls them superchargers) I can add 100 miles of range in 15 mins (just time for a coffee break) and 400 miles in an hour (maybe a lunch stop?). This makes long distance travel a pleasure. I regularly drive from Boston to the New York City / New Jersey area (250 miles one way). The door to door time is the same as flying. Flying costs $250 round trip. Driving costs me $8 round trip if I charge from my solar panels and $29 if I am paying Eversource. Did I mention the zero carbon footprint?

Today, only Tesla has a large network of fast charging stations. EVgo, Chargepoint and others are building their networks of fast chargers but today they are no where near as good as Tesla’s. This reminds me of the early days of cellphones – it’s not the phone, it’s the network!

Heat pumps insulation triple glazed windows and solar panels Zero Carbon Home author David Green — David Green – the “Green Guru”

Book energy efficiency Zero Carbon Home 2020 edition front cove. Profitable ways to cut your home's carbon emissions and bills. How to get a net-zero-carbon house. By Green Guru David Green. — Zero Carbon Home paperback book front cover

The highly-acclaimed book “Zero Carbon Home” by “Green Guru” David Green.

How David Green, the "Green Guru" cut his home's carbon emissions and utility bills to zero by adding heat pumps, insulation, triple-pane windows and solar panels to make a 15% return on investment. — How David Green, the “Green Guru” cut his home’s carbon emissions and utility bills to zero by adding heat pumps, insulation, triple-pane windows and solar panels to make a 15% return on investment.

How we cut our home’s carbon emissions to zero.

How we cut our home’s utility bills to zero.

Solar panels on the roof of our house.

Our Bosch heat pumps replaced our ancient AC units. They fit into the same space and electrical breakers as the old AC units. They are saving us about $3,000 a year in heating oil, even after the extra electricity they take. — We have two 5 tons Bosch heat pumps to heat and cool our house.

Our heat pumps.

The pink fiberglass is 10" thick and has an R-value of about R30. The grey boards are rigid foam ISO boards at about R10 each. — Pink fiberglass and yellow ISO board rigid foam insulation being installed on our flat roof.

Fiberglass and ISO board insulation on the roof of our house.

Although it is hard to quantify, our new triple-glazed windows have transformed the look and feel of the house, plus we no longer have to sit under blankets to avoid the cold drafts off the old windows in winter. — Our new triple glazed windows replaced a mix of 1970’s vintage single and double-glazed units. The insulating value of the new windows is about 3x that of the old ones.

Triple-pane windows in our living room.

Useful links:

The Easiest Way to Calculate Your Home’s Carbon Footprint:https://greenzerocarbonhome.com/2018/07/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-natural-gas-heating-oil-propane-and-coal/

Written Answers to over 300 Questions about Zero Carbon Homes:https://greenzerocarbonhome.com/webinar-questions-and-answers/

Finance and Net Zero Energy Terms explained: https://greenzerocarbonhome.com/energy-and-finance-terms-explained/

Zero Carbon Home Website Home Page: https://greenzerocarbonhome.com

Database of State Incentive for Renewable Energy (DSIRE) https://www.dsireusa.org

Published articles on Zero Carbon and Net Zero Energy:

Department of Energy, EnergySage, “Zero Carbon Home”https://www.energysage.com/project/7230/zero-carbon-home/

Zero Energy Project, “My Zero Energy Retrofit beats my 401k”https://zeroenergyproject.org/2018/09/23/my-zero-energy-retrofit-beats-my-401k/

Cool Effect, “Mr. Green’s Zero Carbon Home” https://www.cooleffect.org/content/news/green-testimonial?utm_source=Cool_Effect_CRM&utm_medium=EMAIL&utm_campaign=20180814Engage_Testimonial&utm_content=green_CTA

Green Energy Times, “My Zero Energy Pool is a Great Investment!” http://www.greenenergytimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/GET_May-2019.pdf

Published Presentations on Zero Carbon Zero Bills:

To see a 3-minute interview of David Green by NBC Boston anchor Joy Lim Nakrin, please click here:TV interview

To see a 20-minute TED talk at Harvard Business School, please click here: TED Talk

You can watch a recorded version of my Zero Carbon, Zero Bills webinar here: Zero Carbon, Zero Bills Webinar

Reviews of my “Zero Carbon, Zero Bills” webinar included, “Minute-for-minute, point-for-point, one of the best webinars I have ever attended. Thank you!”, “David is a true inspiration and asset to our community. He inspired us to get solar panels and a new front door”, “This is like a masterclass in ZeroCarbon”, “Thank you soooo much for the sensible advice and your fabulous resources!!” and, although this next comment is a little flowery, it does express the sentiment of many other comments, “Your contribution to Greening America is great and will probably help our survival as a species a bit longer than expected”.

Hi Mark another thought that might make its way into the building code initiatives:

This is in response to an email about Mitsubishi’s new modular carbon capture technology.

Hi Jan, I am skeptical. Not because of the chemistry – there are dozens of chemistries for sequestering CO2, for instance NASA used lithium hydroxide on the Apollo moon rockets – but because of the cost. Current estimates are about $100-$200 per ton captured. You can buy a carbon offset in the regulated market for about $50 a ton and about $15 a ton in the unregulated markets. They have the same effect.

Unlike solar panels and wind farms where there is no consumable cost, all these carbon capture technologies use a consumable (Lithium hydroxide in NASA’s case, some source of amines in this Mitsubishi example) which means there is a cost you cannot get below for chemical-based carbon capture. Hence economies of scale, that have been so successful in solar and wind, cannot reduce the marginal cost to zero. The cost of the consumable chemicals sets a floor on the cost per ton of the carbon capture.

The cheapest way to sequester carbon is to cut down a mature tree, plant a new one to replace it, saw the tree into planks and use them to build a house. This sequesters the carbon for about 100 years. There is no incremental cost as we do this already and people are perfectly happy paying $4 for a 2×4. What it needs is a building mandate to use wood rather than steel and concrete. Wood can be made into glued/laminated beams that can build up to 4 stories high.