December 1, 2021

Go Small, Live Well

One important step toward making zero energy homes affordable is to make them smaller. However, smaller homes don’t mean sacrificing comfort or function. Here are 20 design ideas that allow you to live big in a small footprint.

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September 20, 2021

Act Now: List or Update Your Home in the Inventory of Zero Homes

Tracking the growth of zero energy homes in all their different forms is essential to building momentum for the growth of zero. If you are an owner, builder, or designer of a zero home, be sure your home is listed and help grow the movement toward zero.

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September 20, 2021

Thinking Inside the Box

Factory-built homes show great promise for zero energy housing. This company is combining high performance and small size with low cost to meet the housing challenges of the coming decade. 

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August 5, 2021

Zero Homes Are Great: Let’s Make Them Better — Zero 2.0

Ten years ago, making a home or building generate as much energy as it uses over the course of a year seemed an immense challenge. Tens of thousands of these advanced energy-efficient structures have been built. But they need to be better to meet the challenges of climate change, health, security, and resilience. So what’s next? Zero 2.0! 

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June 14, 2021

Low Carbon Kitchens

Whether you’re building a new home or replacing worn out appliances, you’ll want to choose products that reduce energy use and your carbon footprint. Some choices are just improved versions of familiar products, and other options may be completely new. Make your next kitchen a 21st century kitchen — ready for our zero carbon future.

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June 14, 2021

Products Used to Get to Zero

You can’t build or remodel a home on the path to zero without buying suitable materials and equipment. That’s why the Zero Energy Project offers a select list of product ideas that can smooth your path to zero. Check out the new products that have been recently added to the Zero Energy Product Directory!

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June 9, 2021

The Mythical Threat to Double-Stud Walls

When choosing a high-performance wall assembly, you have many choices. One of them is to build double-stud walls. The double-stud wall approach sometimes raises the concern that it will lead to mold growth and wood rot. Is this fear based in reality? Green Building Advisor checked it out and found that wood-moisture content and seasonal temperature fluctuations do not seem to create moisture problems in double-stud walls.

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May 7, 2021

Healthy Air in the Best and Worst of Times

Super airtight construction and heat recovery ventilation are necessary companions for zero energy homes. But the outside air may not be as clean as we think. Increasingly common extreme pollution events can overwhelm most fresh air systems. It’s time to make high-efficiency filtration a standard feature of zero homes.

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May 6, 2021

How to Decarbonize the American Household

There’s still time to slow the impact of climate change, but America must act… and fast. This requires a rapid shift to using electric power for everything from household equipment to personal transportation. There’s good news. If done correctly, the transition can save everyone money and create more jobs. We can choose: crisis or opportunity. 

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April 15, 2021

Climate Solutions 101 

This six-video mini course from Project Drawdown presents a comprehensive overview of available solutions to the climate crisis. The entire set of videos runs only 90 minutes and is packed with facts, making it a great resource for teachers, decision makers, and just about everyone. Unlike many other attempts to describe the climate crisis, these videos are focused on the positive climate actions we can take and it reveals a few surprising facts.

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April 8, 2021

Millennials in a Housing Crisis

Homeownership has been the core of the mythical American Dream, but it has been slow to take hold within the millennial generation. Perhaps the housing sector has not been meeting their needs for small, energy efficient, well connected homes. Well planned zero energy homes can make homeownership more accessible to millennials.

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March 18, 2021

Factory-built Homes — Another Path to Zero

The future of residential construction will include more factory buildings. BrightBuilt Home builds modular homes that are modern, durable, and zero energy ready. The precision of factory construction is a perfect match for zero energy homes, and BrightBuilt has been building zero energy homes this way since 2010.

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