This week, Monica and Steve sit down and have a frank discussion about Serenbe’s roadmap to achieving net zero carbon emissions. From land conservation and stormwater management to our organic farm, which provides fresh, local food for our residents and restaurants.
sustainability has been built into Serenbe’s community model from the very beginning. Looking ahead, solar energy, transportation, and EV charging are at the forefront of Steve’s mind. In this episode, we explore the human benefits of environmentally friendly practices (ahem, noise pollution and air quality) as well as the challenges.
Show Notes
This week, Monica and Steve sit down and have a frank discussion about Serenbe’s roadmap to achieving net zero carbon emissions. From land conservation and stormwater management to our organic farm, which provides fresh, local food for our residents and restaurants.
sustainability has been built into Serenbe’s community model from the very beginning. Looking ahead, solar energy, transportation, and EV charging are at the forefront of Steve’s mind. In this episode, we explore the human benefits of environmentally friendly practices (ahem, noise pollution and air quality) as well as the challenges.
Show Notes
(13s):
Sustainability has been an important part of CPE's model from the very beginning with priorities that start with land conservation, also limiting noise and air pollution, supporting local food systems and effective storm water management. In this episode, Steve and I sit down to take stock of Sam's achievements to date, and look ahead to the future specifically, we're looking at how communities like ours can achieve net zero carbon emissions by expanding solar efforts, and also taking a hard look at rural transportation infrastructure. This conversation is based larger in an article that Steve wrote for drawdown, Georgia, which is included in our show notes. And I highly recommend you checkout. So let's get to our conversation today with Steve Nygren.
2 (54s):
And so we started thinking about how we save the natural landscape and of course the first reactions to buy the land. And you could only do that to a certain point. And so that led to really thinking about the bigger issues.
3 (1m 9s):
Hey, Steve, welcome back to Serenbe stories. How are you today?
2 (1m 12s):
Thank you, mod. I'm good.
3 (1m 15s):
Today. I thought that we could dig into all of the philosophical and environmental solutions that have been baked into ceremony from the beginning and what we're sort of playing with an idea of roadmap to zero. Meaning how could we take homes and potentially sections of the community to net zero? I thought it would be a really interesting conversation to get other people to understand what we've done, the challenges, the solutions you've come up with. And then think about what kind of future we wanna see here at Serenbe.
2 (1m 49s):
Sounds great. And net zero means different things to different people. How should we define that for everyone listening?
3 (1m 57s):
Yeah, I think it's thinking about that. The carbon that you're using and the carbon that's coming in, how do we reduce it to no carbon usage? And so what does that mean? Right? Because the house itself is full of carbon. Do we need to buy offsets or do we need to buy materials that are low or no carbon when they're coming into the house? I think there's a lot of questions there, but I know that mostly what we've really focused on to date has been energy usage. So I think we're gonna talk about net zero energy usage in this conversation. I think there's a much bigger conversation about building materials in general, but I think for today it's about energy.
3 (2m 37s):
What do you think?
2 (2m 39s):
I think today we can talk about that, but I think we have to be clear that it's a broader picture than just reducing the energy greenhouse gases come from so many different forms of our human activity. And so I just wanna clarify that for when listening, because many times we think, oh, if we get to here, it's an energy discussion and you know, we have to talk about soils and our plants and agriculture, and it's just a much bigger picture.
3 (3m 6s):
Yeah. And I think you're right. I think we can talk about soil, food, agriculture. Those are areas you've also done a ton of work in, I think the building, the materials is where we're in the process of really digging in deeper with the EarthCraft certifications. And then I think we can talk about in the future, what are we missing? What other things we have to do. Cause it is you're right. It's a continuum and we're always learning every day and we're trying to figure out how can we do better? So wanted to point out that the very bedrock of Serenbe is really about conserving the land. So it's land conservation starts from the beginning. Where did that idea come from?
2 (3m 47s):
Well, it was a selfish idea, I guess if I were really be honest with it because we had moved from the city and all the things that we saw as a problem with development, and we moved the family to the country and we became concerned that urban sprawl was gonna actually come out as it has in most urban areas. And so we started thinking about, had we save the natural landscape and of course the first reactions to buy the land. And you could only do that to a certain point. And so that led to really thinking about the bigger issues. And of course, Ray Anderson, the Rocky mountain Institute were all my guides who had been doing this work 30 years ago.
2 (4m 28s):
And so this is 20 years ago, plus that we started looking at this and it really is the basic that we haven't looked at the natural resources. And during my retirement years, we visited England frequently and the contrast was astonishing. And as we talked to folks there, we realized that after world war II, they put good land policy in because the island could only absorb so much and they couldn't asphalt over it. And so it still felt country with a lot of density in the hamlets, villages and towns. And so that became our real model, that there was a way to do this, why not do it in the United States? And so that was as we sort of moved into from worrying about our own backyard to, oh my gosh, this is really a global problem that we are looking at.
3 (5m 18s):
And I think by saving that land by conserving so much of the land's trees, forest, and farms, those do become carbon land sinks. So that's a great point to your earlier note that that is another way that we're storing tons of carbon annually. I think there was a story with the trees back with the land of business Chronicle that on the thousand acres, it's stored 1.3 million tons of carbon annually, which is incredible because of the preservation of land.
2 (5m 48s):
And we all know this, we hear about the effort to save the rainforest. Well, we also need to save the force in and near urban centers. It's the very thing in addition to the carbon and it's directly connected is the air quality at Serenbe is very different than a few miles from us. And the reason is the prevailing winds blow Northeast. And so Southwest of Serenbe are thousands of acres of force that have not been disturbed. And so that fresh air through those trees that are also dealing with the carbon are also providing that fresh air in cooler into our area.
2 (6m 29s):
So there's a lot of tentacles that this really affects and that we can get into all the health issues that it isn't just about carbon neutral and hitting to zero it's many tentacles that all come together, but you're right. It begins with how are we treating the land in a balanced growth? And the important thing is development is not bad. It's the way we have been developing. And so what we're demonstrating here and for the zoning that we put in place for the Chattahoo Chi hill country, 40,000 acres, is that we will put 20% more housing in 30% of the land per square mile than metropolitan Atlanta has done in a 17 county area over the last three decades and disturbing 80% of the land while doing that.
2 (7m 23s):
And Atlanta is no different than most of our major urban centers. And so this shows it's many times we think we have to stop development, or we're gonna oppose development coming in and we need to really change the conversation is how do we accommodate the development in relationship to nature rather than imposing nature.
3 (7m 45s):
And I think that's the very first step that you took. And I think that is really interesting because it's a very common sense solution, but people just aren't doing it. Now, you mentioned the houses on top. So once you knew we're gonna preserve the land and we're gonna build houses high density on the remaining land, why did you choose that? You wanted to have it certified what certifications were out there to have the building certified for energy reduction, water conservation, as well as sort of having the best building materials, what was available in why EarthCraft?
2 (8m 23s):
So you had to remember that we're in the year 2000, that we're looking at this and it's amazing how far we've come in. 22 years at that time, south face was really one of the few leading voices and organizations hosting a conference, bringing in thought leaders and talking about this many people are not aware that EarthCraft certification predated lead certification. The green building council was just working on this, but actually south base had had a certification program for residential early on, but we wanted to both learn and be a leader in these spaces.
2 (9m 3s):
So being local, being really going to all the south face EarthCraft was the natural certification. So from day one, we had, all of our houses were required to be craft certified. Our first commercial building was the blue eye Daisy, and we stepped forward to be lead certified there. Now you do not normally see lead certification on a small commercial building because the blue eye Daisy's like thousand square feet. And I believe it remains the smallest silver lead certified building to this day. I haven't checked on it. I think there's a information center somewhere. That's actually goal certified. That's smaller than that. But when you do a small building like that for lead certification, it's more for the effort of doing it rather than actual making sense.
2 (9m 50s):
That was our guidepost that has become now the way we're doing it. When EarthCraft wanted to test certification for communities, we were one of the five or six that participated in that. I was convinced I was going to be terribly embarrassed because there was a lot of points towards being near transit. And of course we're out here in the country. And so I participated as a good sport to be part of the program and to my surprise because of our relationship and what we've done in land conservation, storm, water waste water. We ended up being the top scoring, even topping the scores on those that are located on top of transit. So this proves, I think that you have to look at the big picture.
2 (10m 33s):
We too many times focus in on one of two silos. I think that is the answer and it's not it it's. How does this all tie together?
3 (10m 42s):
Right? Well, actually the fact that you brought up storm water and waste water, talk about both of those, let's start with storm water, cuz that sort of ties into the land planning a little bit, typically what do cities or what do communities do with their storm water? And what's different here
2 (10m 60s):
Usually. And the regulations focused on getting storm water, controlling it on the site and getting it off the site. And so we've gone through decades of regulations of putting the storm water and hard pipes, many times, moving it to retention ponds that are usually mud pits. And you see them circle with chain link fences in many communities and industrial parks around the nation. Now I was naive. I didn't know about any of these kinds of things. And so we hired some of the top experts recommended by the Rocky mountain Institute and on stormwater expert happened to be Bruce Ferguson, who was the university of Georgia, has written many books on stormwater regulations.
2 (11m 42s):
And so we engaged Bruce to really work with our civil engineers on what the ideal environmental system would be. He cautioned me that these systems aren't really, really approved in the United States that they have several of them they've tested them in other countries. But of course I was doing this not to be a developer, but to deal with a lot of these issues. And so we proceeded to design it and found out that he was right. We couldn't get it approved. And, and so we have a lot of stories around how we push and actually had to break the law to do that. All those regulations have been changed. And today you see fire retention, swells, and it's becoming the new way to handle a storm water.
2 (12m 22s):
Now this wasn't because of us. This was because we hired the experts that were pushing these buttons on many levels and other people were, it just takes a long time for regulation to get changed, unfortunately. And, and that's where we were at the beginning of that change. And so we were able to do it and everyone sort of turned their back as we proceeded just to have some of the first power retention storm water. And now we have several examples of how that can be done from dense areas to in the woods. So the whole idea is, you know, you get, especially your storm water that falls on your streets, which tends to be full of pollutants. Get that cleaned as fast as you can.
2 (13m 3s):
You wanna slow down the water, so you get it into these swells with plants so that by the time it reaches the streams, it's percolating in and it's been cleaned through the natural resources of the layers of the earth and the plant and root matter. It's a very natural way in the old pipe way. The water never had a chance to cleanse itself and it built up speed. And so wherever it came out, whether it was a pond or a tributaries, it caused more damage when it finally hit wherever it was headed. And I think that's why you'll see most of our urban centers turned their back on our tributaries or buried them because they were a mess.
2 (13m 47s):
And as we turned our back on them, people dumped their tires and they're used batteries and they become more of a dump land. And that's why it's costume so much now to clean up the tributaries. As we now see our streams within our cities are a huge asset. And I think cities across America are really putting a lot of effort into doing that.
3 (14m 6s):
Yeah, no, I think it's really interesting. You do see it pretty regularly now. And we've talked about on this podcast and others that the old fourth board is a great example of making it an amenity, something that was sort of piped away and behind fences. And now it's this an incredible park that's really surrounding that retention pond that people maybe don't even realize that what that's being used for
2 (14m 27s):
That's right. And it costs the city less to do it that way than it did because they priced out the traditional way. And the only reason that it really happened is because it was so much more affordable at the time. And now I think everyone sees the asset. That's one of the great early examples.
3 (14m 43s):
Yeah. Well sticking to water just for a second. The other thing that was really interesting, again, this was from the very beginning, the way you decided to treat the wastewater is completely unique. It is a sand filtration natural way to treat it. There's no chemicals, it's not dangerous. It there's nothing bad going on there. Tell us a little bit about where that came from. Cause that, again, just like the land conservation, just like the EarthCraft certification and knowing you wanted to do something unique with the buyer attention of how the water moved throughout the community, you also knew you wanted to handle the wastewater in a different way, very forward thinking. So where did that all come from? And was this another expert that you stumbled upon?
3 (15m 23s):
Or how did that happen?
2 (15m 25s):
No, this was a reaction. We stepped into it because as we were dealing with the rezoning for the 40,000 acres and we have a podcast that takes you through that whole process, as we had the Fulton county planning department and various folks on board, the wastewater public utilities tried blocking it. And we found that they had already done a complete traditional sewer system for the 40,000 acres and had used the future users as part of the bond to expand the wastewater treatment plant in south Fulton. Now that would've allowed urban sprawl, that's where it happens.
2 (16m 8s):
It's that first sewer line that runs to some place that everyone can tap onto. And that's the beginning of sprawl. So we realized that we could not allow a traditional sewer system into the area and that we had cluster development. And so we looked at those alternative of individual systems. Now packaged plants that are common are not really very environmental. They don't operate to the standards that I think they should. And at the Rocky mountain Institute, the group of folks they brought in in September, 2000, one of the people was John Todd. John was a creator of the living machine in this year.
2 (16m 49s):
And last century, I guess he was one of the really forward thinking people about water. And so John introduced us to Michael Ogden of natural systems and we looked at independent systems that would be required at that time for the Chattahoochee hill country. And that is what led us to designing this system with constructed wetlands. And they're all cells that moves the affluent water through various cells and then into sand filters and then used for irrigation. It was first of its kind to be approved in the Southeast. And the only one that I'm aware of that comes close to the same standards is the water hub at Emory university.
3 (17m 31s):
Oh, interesting. That Emory has that. And so that was something that they, were they doing that around the same time? Or was that something newer?
2 (17m 38s):
No, they were doing that later.
3 (17m 40s):
Nice. So moving off from water, but staying with sort of land based. The other thing again from inception, you knew you wanted was a farm. I know that you guys had grown your own food and all the homes you'd lived in and really believed in fresh and healthy food, obviously, cuz of all of your hospitality background, it was hugely important, but why a local farm? Why set a farm in a community? I mean that really, really wasn't happening at all in
2 (18m 11s):
It wasn't. But as I mentioned, we, you know, I never intended to be a developer. This was all a reaction to saving the land. And once I realized that we were actually going to step into the role of developer, what were the quality pieces that we want to bring? So we've talked about this idea of high density and having the balance of the open fields of the saved lands. And so what then are the components that really made a community? And that's where we identified art and agriculture and education and health as the pillars of the community. I grew up in rural Colorado on the of, and I thought back about what our community was like back then.
2 (18m 58s):
And these were all important, natural things that just happened. But we many times forgotten these things and especially our food and who grows it. And so we felt it was important to have a farm Prairie crossing preceded us. And we were anxious to see what they were doing with both storm water and agriculture and their farm is often a corner. So it was a great attribute to the community, but it wasn't integrated into the community. And I felt it was important to really pull it in and growing up on a farm that seemed like a natural thing. There was a perception that farms were smelly and no one wanted to live next to.
2 (19m 40s):
And that could be true of industrial farms that use a lot of chemicals and, and you do have the odors, but not so of an organic farm. And so yes, we were the first, I believe in the last several decades to actually put a farm next to the houses, as you know, Monica, you walk out your backyard and you can talk over the fence to the farmers and watch them. Yep. And that just didn't happen. It just seemed natural. We didn't realize that it was the beginning of a trend. And I believe a New York times reporter came to do a story and she turned its, and it's kind of stuck. I'm not sure what we like it, but it's certainly a trend you talk abouts and everyone in the developed community knows what you're talking about.
3 (20m 20s):
Yeah. Which always helps to try and explain who and what we are. That definitely is an incredible aspect.
2 (20m 26s):
But I think an important part too, it isn't just the fenced farm because we brought edible landscaping into the community. So we have the blueberries at the crosswalks. You have the service berries, apple trees, beach trees, figs to the nuts cons. And so our food sources shouldn't be these fenced areas that are remote by strangers. It should be part of our community. That was one of the big things that just seemed like a natural thing to do. And as you know, it's, it's one of the huge things. I mean blueberry seasons, my goodness. It's amazing what a community builder that is.
3 (21m 1s):
Yeah. Well, and then just, we know what the importance of soil health and how important that is for the climate. So I think having that local farming beyond the education and knowing your farmer and the fresh food is making sure that our soil is being taken care of and we have crops to grow. We have those local foods jumping back to the buildings and as well as these were sort of the pillars that you set up in the beginning geothermal was something that you also had in the beginning. And I didn't realize that until it became more pervasive here at C that actually we already had a couple original geothermal buildings in the community. And again, very early on, very forward thinking, but talk a little bit about geothermal what that is, why you chose to use it in those original buildings, how you've hidden it.
3 (21m 54s):
And then now it's a requirement for all new homes. So I think it's an interesting arc of saying like, I'm gonna do it as a demonstration. I'm gonna give you the choice and then it's actually required.
2 (22m 5s):
Well, here again, it was, you know, as you're looking at various solutions from my naive builder standpoint, a foundation was reducing energy demand. We were very interested in that. And then another thing I was worried about was noise proof that deals with how we do our garbage and especially the air compressors that were very noisy. Our blue I Daisy courtyard is about 12 units to an acre. And because there's a courtyard on one side, a street on another and they attach and some are higher looking over the roof, where on earth would we put air compressors that wasn't disrupting?
2 (22m 46s):
And when I think about 12 units and all of the air compressors that would be in this small area, it was going to be noise interruptive. And here we had this beautiful courtyard with a fountain design by Ryan Gainey. And as I thought about all those noisy compressors, they were gonna drown out the sound of the water. And so as I started asking several folks, well, what's the solution. And I was introduced to geothermal and found, not only did it deal with my noise pollution, but it also reduced energy man for the hitting air conditioning system by 50%. Oh wow. So this seemed natural. So of course I said, we're going to do this.
2 (23m 26s):
And this is in 2004 for all the units around the blue I Daisy. And we had to figure out how to pay for that premium. And we fronted that cost. And then we had a payback by whoever bought us. I think it was for five years at that time, I put it on our townhouse that we built in and I thought this was just such a natural thing that everyone would, of course want geothermal. But I assume learned that that wasn't the case. People had a tendency to look at the expense and not the long term or the benefits. And so a few people would do it, any of our builders doing what we call spec product, where they were getting a loan to build a house, to sell the banks, wouldn't give them a loan for that premium.
2 (24m 11s):
So that was a non start several years into it. We were recognized as a leader in a lot of these areas and Bosch located their information and experience center at Cy, where they brought five of their product lines from their tools, their kitchen appliances, their geothermal solar. And they brought people from around the world to see that. And I thought, man, this is such an incredible education place. Well actually buy in.
3 (24m 37s):
But I,
2 (24m 38s):
But I found the suppliers as well as people looking at it, tend to look at it in silos and they look at what the premium is and how many years it'll take for that payback. And that's kind of what everyone looks at in partnership with Bosch, we built a demonstration house. And so of course it had to be EarthCraft certified, which reduced energy costs by 30, 35. It was geothermal with the Bosch geothermal. And that reduced their energy for H V a C 50%, which resolved in about another 30, 35%. And because we'd reduced the overall capacity by almost 70%, the solar that was put on the house was one third, the amount that would normally be put on a 2300 square foot house.
2 (25m 29s):
So that reduced the cost for the solar. You can watch the meter on that house run backwards. And granted, when we sold it, it was more expensive than average 2300 square foot house. But when they got an 80% mortgage on that house, the increase in the monthly mortgage payment was less than what their power bill would've been. And so it's cash positive month one. So it's misleading to look at the savings and then the premium cost and figure out it's a five to seven year payback,
3 (26m 9s):
Right?
2 (26m 10s):
Well, that is true. If you look at actually cash flow, it's cash positive month one,
3 (26m 16s):
Right? And I think that's, sometimes you've gotta flip the script a little bit with people and have them think differently.
2 (26m 24s):
And so like so many things when we're headed towards reducing energy demand and headed towards net zero, many times, we do not qualify the quality of life, the effect it has. And I think that's, I wish, and, and I hope we, at some point can monetize the improved health, mental and physical from some of these environmental things. But I think the silence of the geothermal is one of those things. And if you talk to anyone who's lived in a home and especially a neighborhood with geothermal where you open your windows in the spring, in the fall, and you hear the birds in everything versus your and neighbors, air compressors.
2 (27m 6s):
It's very hard to go back. I've had a couple people who one person move within C to a, from a geothermal home to a non geothermal home. And they, they didn't realize the difference. It's one of those things that we get used to both, but it's hard to go back from being in a silent geothermal home and yard to one that has the noise.
3 (27m 28s):
Well, and tell us about the transition you made from making it a choice, knowing that it wasn't an easy straight line explanation for people. And it was hard to get them over that hump of understanding the cash flow positive. So what was the solution there? How did you finally move it? So all new builds were starting to be required. I think it was maybe 17, 2017 started
2 (27m 53s):
That's right. Well, I came to accept the fact that builders that were building things for resale simply couldn't participate. They couldn't get the appraisals from their banks to do that. So no matter how much I educated that wasn't gonna change. And when we were getting ready to break ground for motto, our third community, which is the most dense of everything we've done, it's very dense. I realized that we had to solve this and the only way to solve it, the only way I could require it was if we did all of the pre-drilling or connected the lines to the lot. However, we provided the geothermal because you there's several ways to bring geothermal.
2 (28m 35s):
You can do vertical, horizontal lines. You can go into the lakes and waters. And so there's various ways to do it. And so we decided to form our own utility. And then we do all of the initial drilling to provide those lines to the house. And then the builders agree to build a system that connects to geothermal. And then the first buyer then has the option to purchase that system and take all the credits. And, and so now motto and going forward, it's all geothermal. And you, you really notice the difference. You walk through the community, even with construction going on, people notice it's quieter in most.
3 (29m 14s):
That's incredible. And I know that there's a newer neighborhood or what, what we sort of call pocket neighborhood loop, which is within it's on beautiful Ridge. And so you started thinking about the next step there, which was solar, but tell us about now you've got the EarthCraft we've got the geothermal, solar has always been an option for people, but that's sort of very much a homeowner choice, just like I may or may not want granite countertops, but now with a lot of policy changes and pricing coming down, it's much more viable for the everyday homeowner. Talk a little bit about where you are with solar and where you wanna go with that.
2 (29m 54s):
Yeah. So from the beginning we required all homes to be solar red. Now we probably didn't define that and we didn't even know what that meant. You know, I realized to SHA shaft running up to the roof and maybe that was it. And now remember, we're talking 20 years ago, as I did some of the analysis, I realized there was a lot of pros and cons to solar. The entire life cycle of the panels in those days were not necessarily environmental. And I had problems really requiring it. And there was a big price difference. It was a real premium that I had trouble justifying 20 years ago.
2 (30m 34s):
That of course has changed. The whole life cycle of solar is much more environmental to where I can feel good about it. So we wanna look at how do we take this to the next step? So beginning with loop loop, all architects have to design the, the roof so that it can hold adequate panels to, and the orientation to handle the load, to make that house net zero. So that is a new requirement of all architects moving forward to designing it therapy. The other thing that I, I think is fun. Monica is we have more solar team than people realize. And many times I'm touring people talking about this.
2 (31m 15s):
They say, why not solar? So I just start pointing it out and they've been down the street and they hadn't even noticed it. So
3 (31m 22s):
Yeah, it is true
2 (31m 23s):
When it's designed into the house. It's very different than when it's plopped on houses.
3 (31m 28s):
Yeah, no, I think that's true. And I think there's no reason not to do it at this point. So the architect is required to sort of build it in and to consider that and how it's gonna work. But the homeowner still has the choice right now. We know that it really, truly is solar ready if you will like it, it in a more defined way. And that also includes ready for backup batteries and ready for EV charging. So I know those are a little bit of two different areas, but we sort of bundle them together. As these homes will all have the ability to do those three things. Do you think you're gonna require it in the future or where's your head on that?
2 (32m 6s):
Where solar is very different than geothermal is it has to be done at the construction. You can't add geothermal at a later point. It makes no sense the solar you can add at any time. And of course the technology and prices are constantly changing. I constantly debate where we are on requiring that because it can be added and we are making it as available as affordable now, should we decide? And there's a huge debate about improving the existing grid system versus supporting microgrids. Should microgrids become a feasible thing. Then it would be advantageous to actually require solar and a battery backup per house.
2 (32m 54s):
Because if we can reduce the demand, perhaps then your microgrid is a lot more feasible. And for the community, we're in a perfect test because we've been reducing demand. So our demand by the national average, Georgia average is very low because of our certification requirement. And now geothermal requirement would be a perfect candidate and should conversations around microgrids move forward. Then it would make a lot of sense to require solar with battery backup.
3 (33m 31s):
Have you thought about doing, I don't know if this is the right term solar arrays, like in a field or has anybody even in chat Hills had that consideration considering we have so much land and there is now conversations about co-locating solar and ag or solar in production. They just raise the panels higher and they're underneath it. Have those conversations that all feasible.
2 (33m 56s):
Absolutely. We've about that. There are conversations and amazing Georgia, I believe is one of the leaders now in solar farms. Really? Yeah, no, please confirm that.
3 (34m 10s):
Well
2 (34m 11s):
Look. Yeah, but Georgia is one of the leaders and that's huge. Thanks to Ted Turner, you know, and Laura and Rutherford for pushing that forward in the Georgia legislature and the Southern company, understanding the future of solar. Now, everything that has been done with those solar fields does feed into the grid. So you still have the grid issue to deal with in those cases. So no solar fields are becoming much more common. Now my philosophy is that if you reduce the demand on individual buildings in house, that addition isn't going to be as great as we think. So we do not have to put acres.
2 (34m 52s):
Now we have to put those acres to adapt to some of our poorly designed homes and buildings of the past, but as those get retired and that happens faster than we realize, then I'm not sure we need these huge arrays. If we require each individual building to really come close to net zero. And if you look at the living building challenge, that is what is required. And so is that as people realize that this makes economic sense, then I think you're gonna see that whole thing shifting in this whole net zero conversation. The first thing people think of is solar fields. But the first thing you have to think about is reducing demand and making each building as self-sufficient as possible.
3 (35m 38s):
Right? Well, and I think that as you build out new neighborhoods, there's an opportunity to rethink what kind of opportunities cuz the builders even come to us with new ideas and innovations and even EarthCraft is updating their requirements. I think in this coming year to add more opportunities, whether that's the blow and cellulose that goes into your house versus spray foam or requiring heat pumps, which we're already doing with the geothermal, getting rid of the traditional gas. Anything else that you're thinking about as we move forward that you're would love to see happen, even if it's not today?
2 (36m 18s):
Well, I think also on the solar to continue that if as we would put a solar field in, I've seen some of those that are done as art installations and it's just a matter that expensive, it's just how they curve and you know, it's just not rows, but I've done some estimates on putting 'em along our fence lines, which you see in Germany so that, you know, we're already putting deer fencing around our farms and all you would do is extend those posts. I mean, there'd be different posts that could hold an array of solar along the roadside or the fence lines that divide the farms. I think of across many of our open fields that connect communities and ends of having a covered walkway.
2 (36m 60s):
You know, in the top of that, I think in cities, we're finding, you know, we see where garages, it's an open air parking lot, but it's to cover now for garage. So suddenly they can charge a premium for parking there because it's undercover, but it's the solar. So I think if we did it, you wouldn't think of just a field that we transition into a solar farm. It would actually have multiple uses and be visually attracted as well.
3 (37m 23s):
Yes. I would say that I would not expect C B to do it in the traditional way. They're gonna find something different, something new to do.
2 (37m 31s):
I think, as you look at the things that are causing problems, generally, if you look at 'em, there are broken systems as well. And I think one of the most broken systems, not, I think the statistics are out there is how we transport ourselves with one human in a multi vehicle. That's burning energy requiring asphalt lanes. And no matter how you analyze this system, it's a broken system. I remember being at the Ted conference the same year that I was at the urban land Institute conference and they were, and this is four or five years ago. Now they were both talking about this being one of the great changes in the next 20 years. And so that 20 years is ticking by and I believe it was statistic that 92% of our cars are parked all the time.
2 (38m 19s):
Wow.
3 (38m 20s):
And
2 (38m 20s):
We have three paved parking spaces for every car. So if you look at all statistics, this is not a sustainable system. That's gonna crash once there are alternatives in place. And now with your various car share programs and Uber and Lyft and autonomous cars in the future, that this is going to be a changing system. And especially the two largest purchasing groups, the young people under 30 and those aging, they're all getting away from driving their own cars. This is why there's been a huge boom into walkable communities, whether it's in small towns or in the center cities, because we're really not addicted to cars as we have been for several
3 (39m 7s):
That's true. The car sort of created the suburb, right? And now we're trapped with that history, but that makes a great point. That Cy is designed to be very walkable. And another sort of, I don't wanna say an unintended consequence, but kinda a fun unintentioned is golf carts. And now electric bikes are everywhere.
2 (39m 29s):
The new thing, I mean, everybody doing electric banks all over and then of course not to mention all of our urban cities, the, the scooters that river or who never guessed how that would become a rage just overnight. And most cities are dashing to keep up with it. We, we understand the need and the convenience of it. Now we gotta figure out infrastructure it.
3 (39m 49s):
Yeah,
2 (39m 49s):
Definitely. Yeah. I think transportation is gonna be one, the big things, you know, predicted this would be evolutionary 50 years ago and we would have, and all sort took over. Now. I,
3 (40m 14s):
Steve, thank you. This was super informative and eliminating even for somebody that's lived here for so long. And I think there's probably a whole nother podcast on just building materials. Maybe we can get one of our builders in to talk with us.
2 (40m 28s):
That would be great. And even people in the supply change on how this is changing. This whole thing of environment's gonna change mostly when the market starts demanding it versus when leadership decides to.
3 (40m 43s):
Right. Thanks Steve.
2 (40m 45s):
Thanks Monica.