How I Became Interested in Renewable Energy

Idea Germination/My Path:

• NATURE I learned to pay attention to natural cycles in the Boy Scouts and from my father, who was raised on a farm in NY. Growing up in the 1970's and 1980's exposed me to a growing pile of evidence that we need to start doing more to preserve the environment. We had the energy crisis of the late 70's. There has been a dramatic growth in the scientific understanding about large natural cycles (water, energy, weather) and how man has affected them. The US made very positive efforts to reduce air pollution, only to see the more subtle problem of global warming emerge as a more serious threat.
• POWERFUL SUN I attended and worked for Rice University in Houston, Texas from 1984 to 1993. It gets hot there. Very hot. For most of the year. When it is hottest, the sun is shining the most strongly. Houston housing is characterized by one-story ranch houses with flat rooves. This made me start thinking about how ironic it was that more people did not make use of that constant solar power which was mercilessly beating down on them. During my student years, I could not afford air conditioning because of the resulting electrical bills. So there was a direct connection in my daily life between the sun and electricity.
• LEARN When I wanted to learn more about renewable energy, I was lucky enough to be given a copy of a book by a good friend named Joe Watters called the Solar Living Sourcebook, from a company called Real Goods. It is a combination of a renewable energy primer, a specific how-to manual and a sales catalog. I read through that off and on for several years, mulling over the ideas.
• PLAY PEN I bought a large, 80 year-old house in 1996 and started making making repairs and improvements to it in 1999. This led me to think in detail about the "sub-systems" of a home -- electrical, heating, cooling, plumbing. I wanted to make use of some of the ideas I had read about in the Sourcebook in the changes I was making to the house.
• REASONABLE When you want to do something right, it is always so much easier to start from scratch than to modify an existing structure. So there are practical limitations on what I can do to my older house to make it more energy and water efficient. Boy, do I envy people who can have their next home be custom-built! That's when you can incorporate lots and lots of good ideas. But most of us are not in that situation. But that doesn't mean we can't improve our homes to meet our goals at reasonable costs.