Being Green: A Statement of a Reality

Sometimes we meet our destiny on the path we choose to avoid it. This seems to be the way our society has approached environmental responsibility. We are doing a lot of things which make a strong statement about ourselves as being “green,” but we’re hardly making a dent in actually becoming a green culture. This is because we typically can’t see the whole environmental system, and so simply choose the solutions that are the most convenient or perhaps make the biggest statement about ourselves. However, convenience rarely is the real solution to anything, and statements fall very short of action…unless you’re trying to sell something.

The cash for clunkers idea may have been a great way for the U.S. economy to sell a few more cars in a tough economy, but it may not have been the best idea to green up our air. After all, cars have very little impact on our surrounding environment from actually driving them. What impacts our earth a great deal though is the building of that car, the transporting of that car, and even the marketing of that car. Not to mention where does that car go once it gets traded in? Back to the earth? I don’t think so. One might guess that it might be better to stick with that old clunker than to throw it out and buy a new one…high gas mileage and all.

But what do we do? I mean high gas mileage cars are a problem. Aren’t they? The reason we perceive this is because we see the exhaust from cars coming out of our tail pipe, and we might even see a slight haze in our city air. This gives us the perceived impression that the majority of airborne pollution comes from cars and trucks. It does not. The fact is the majority of airborne pollution actually comes from large industrial farms and ranches. Cattle put more pollutants in the air via methane than all of our cars combined. However chances of consumers switching from steak to carrots are slim.

So perhaps the reason consumers are scrambling over hybrid cars is because they want to do something, and skipping that burger ain’t one of them. Well, there might be a better way. And it falls on the second biggest pollution source…our homes and offices. Yes, that’s right, our homes and buildings are the second largest contributor to CO in our air. But the problem is that typically greening our homes doesn’t quite make the same statement as driving my hybrid car around town. After all, no one can see my 95% efficient furnace in the basement. But they can see my car with the large hybrid logo on the back of it. However, the earth and consumers would be better served by sticking with an older car (one that didn’t need to be manufactured in the last five years) and update their heating and cooling system instead. That’s right, I said it. Buy a furnace, not a car. 55% of your household energy bill goes to heating and cooling your home, and the leading cause of human generated greenhouse gases on earth is generated from our homes and buildings. You do the math.

In fact, you can even hybrid your home, utilizing basically the same concept as your hybrid car. It’s called a dual fuel system and it heats a home on natural gas when it’s most efficient to do so and then on electric power when that becomes most efficient. The technology is not new and it’s an extremely cost effective way to bring down the utility bill and save the environment. I mean even the manufacture of heating and cooling systems are more environmentally sustainable, and with 100% of an old system recyclable it's also more sustainable to dispose of our old ones. Now, I know, many of you will say that a ground source system would be the best bet. And I agree. However, not every older home is easily converted to a ground source system, and for a lot homes it’s a financial possibility (even if the payback is within ten years). But all homes are easily converted to a hybrid heating system.

But how does this hybrid work you ask? And is it really that efficient? A hybrid simply is a furnace combined with a heat pump (which is like an air conditioner in reverse). The system will move from using the gas furnace to heat your home, to using an electric heat pump to heat it. The point at which the gas turns off and the electric turns on is called your balance point. This balance point is set for your region, utility costs, and typical weather (most times it’s between 35 degrees and 45 degrees). The system will make the utility switch automatically and the balance point can be adjusted to reflect current energy prices. The furnace is up to 95% efficient and the heat pump is greater than 100% efficient because it’s working off of a heat transfer as opposed to generating it’s own heat through combustion. Then, in the summer, the heat pump is capable of reversing and will cool your home (as efficiently as an air conditioner).

In this manner, a hybrid system is even better than adding solar panels to your house. Because unless you’re using solar panels to operate your heating and cooling system, you’re doing very little to either stem the tide of environmental pollution or save money on your utility bill. And yet solar panels are sold much more often than any hybrid system. You have to ask yourself whether adding solar panels is actually an effective solution for your home or whether it is simply making a statement about your “environmental stewardship.” Even windows and doors aren’t a better option than replacing your old heating system. Although windows and doors can change the mean radiant temperature (or the temperature it feels like) in a room, they do very little to actually bring down the cost of running your heating system. This is because windows typically make up a small portion of the wall space in a home. But we sure do buy a lot of windows and doors, because they look good…and they make us feel like we’re contributing to an eco-solution.

So what does green really mean? Most of us know that it probably has something to do with recycling, driving a little less, and probably saving a few whales while we’re at. But most of us don’t really consider the real causes of man’s impact on the environment, or what really is an environmental priority, or what makes fiscal sense to the average consumer. It is only with a systems approach to environmental solutions that our society can become truly sustainable.