The Holy Grail of a Zero-Carbon Home
The Public Policy Institute of California discusses how zero-carbon homes can have a huge impact on reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, we only build 100,000–150,000 new housing units each year in California—we don’t build enough houses to get us to carbon neutrality in the next 30 years. The housing stock that contributes the most carbon is the 10–14 million housing units built before 1980. Housing built after 2010 is super efficient, but before 1980, it’s the Wild West, with single-paned windows, poorly constructed doors, little or poor insulation, and windows that leak. If we retrofit 5% of the housing stock built before 1980, that would have the same carbon benefit as 10 years of zero-carbon home construction.
We have to start retrofitting older homes. Many pre-1980s homes are owned by elderly folks who’ve lived there for many years. If we incentivized low-income families living in old homes to retrofit, that would lead to an amazing reduction in carbon. It’s so easy, and it will help us achieve this goal much faster, with the secondary benefit of reducing energy costs for low-income Californians.
If we had just built efficiencies into our building codes earlier than we did in 2000, California would have already reduced its carbon footprint radically…