Chic energy goes green, keeps green in wallet

By Aili McConnon

updated 6:32 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2006

Is green the new black?

More than 1 million U.S. households now warm their homes in the winter with heat from the Earth instead of using furnaces or fuel lines. Elton John, Richard Branson —the chief executive of Virgin Airlines — and Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, use ground-source energy in their homes too.

Even President Bush has a geothermal system in his vacation home in Crawford, Texas. Designed by architect David Heymann, Prairie Chapel Ranch captures solar energy and has a cistern that gathers rainwater and wastewater, purifies it, then uses it to irrigate the greenery around the presidential getaway.

Reducing the size of your carbon footprint and increasing the number of renewable energy systems you use is becoming something to brag about. From geothermal systems to wind turbines to solar panels, going green is starting to get glamorous, as well as being politically correct, of course, and simply forward-thinking. And as renewable and conservationist technologies are becoming economically competitive with traditional fuels, several alternative energy companies have seen demand skyrocket in 2006.

“The green-energy movement is growing in leaps and bounds,” says Paul Glenney, a director of energy initiatives at AeroVironment, a California company that makes sleek wind turbines that can be mounted on buildings. Glenney calls these examples of “kinetic architecture,” and they point to consumers' increasing demand for more elegant products. “This is a generation increasingly interested in clean energy,” says Glenney. “Customers increasingly want products for their offices and homes.”

Setup costs are still hefty, but several states, including California, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, offer significant rebates for switching to geothermal, wind or solar energy sources.

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John Thulin, president of Scandia Contractors, a geothermal company in Southampton, N.Y., says that while demand is up, most customers initially don't even know how the systems work. Geo-exchange systems usually pump thermal energy into your home in one of two ways. A closed loop system pumps a mixture of water and non-toxic antifreeze through a series of sealed pipes buried about 6 feet under ground.

The pipes look like a “horizontal slinky,” says Thulin. An open system — most commonly used in Long Island, N.Y., thanks to the aquifer — draws water from a lake, pond or well. The water moves through a heat exchanger, which extracts its thermal energy and then returns the water to the source. In warm weather, both closed and open systems work in reverse: Air vents remove hot air from rooms and send it to the heat pump, which transfers the excess heat back into the Earth.

More than 2,000 homes on Long Island use geothermal heating and cooling systems, based on the number of Long Island Power Authority rebates dished out, says Thulin, who has installed or sold more than 100 systems from Maine to Maryland since 2000. The typical installation cost for a 2,500-square-foot home that already has a built-in air distribution system ranges from $20,000 to $30,000.

Geo-exchange systems require more upfront costs, but once they're installed they cut down dramatically on monthly heating and cooling costs, saving homeowners 30 to 70 percent in the heating mode and 20 to 50 percent in the cooling mode, according to the Geothermal Heat Pump consortium, a national organization that connects consumers, contractors and architects, and provides information about rebates. The 1 million geothermal systems in the U.S. currently eliminate more than 5.8 million metric tons of CO2 annually, or take the equivalent of nearly 1.3 million cars off the road, according to the consortium.

As for air-driven energy, wind turbines are spreading beyond wind farms to people's homes.

Since 1980, Bergey Wind Company, a pioneer in residential wind energy, has sold turbines in more than 90 countries from Saudi Arabia to Africa and all over the U.S.

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