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SPECIAL FINANCIAL INCENTIVES FOR GOING GREEN

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We have an annual Electro-Technology Expo for real estate and home building people, sponsored by Black Hills Power and my Black Hills Home Builders Association. I went, expecting to get a lot of work done in the backs of the rooms on my wifi-connected PC. After all, how engrossing would a session on "Modern Water Heaters" be? Well that was a mistake. Session after session played the same refrain. It goes like this. The home is no longer a thing. It is many inter-dependent dynamically operating systems. While we sleep at night, or leave for work by day, that home is busy! Water heaters are no longer just for cooking water. Roof shingles are no longer just for deflecting rain. Shingles are now photovoltaic-impregnated electric co-generation systems. Even the ground under our home is no longer just dirt. It is now a geothermal heat exchange reservoir.

And, you know that dumb little clock-faced dial that used to run backward and tell meter-readers how much power you used last month? Not in the future. We're raising the IQ of these little gadgets about 1000%. "Smart Meters" in the future will help us collaborate with the power company to balance our mutually agreed goals for energy conservation, cost savings, household comfort, and environmental impact. Smart Metering will not only tell the power company how much we are using this moment, but what we're using it for, and even allow the power grid to enforce our agreed limits on usage.
On the one hand, I don't want Big Brother sniffing around my energy usage behaviors. But on the other hand, as long as I am connected to the electric utility's grid, I sure would like them to cooperate with me, in helping to spend less of my money and less of Mother Nature's resources. If you want to be independent and private, then go off-grid. (Which I hope to do in my next home.)

So, what financial meat is winding up in the Stimulus Package to implement promised incentives for us to "go green"? Plenty. My favorite is the plan to extend the tax credit for investments in green improvements. Also, the Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008 is described as extending "the investment tax credit for eight more years for businesses."

And there is that whole underwhelming "green financing" thing that has been trying for years to get off the starting line. If our lenders won't loan money on that house insulated with straw bales, or on home improvements to retrofit a geothermal system, then it matters little how smart we think the technology is. But there are signs that the financial press, at least, is catching on to green financing. If you enjoy staying up at night to study green financing, then my web site offers some links to helpful reading.

The point is, we can do our part, and help the IRS do its part, if we become informed about what tax and stimulus incentives exist, and what new home-building technologies exist, to help us to "go green." We were down this road before, in Jimmy Carter's 1970's. But it was academic then. It's survival this time. It's time to get serious, and we have new serious homebuiding technologies to help us get there. But the technology won't come knocking on our door. We have to learn where to look and then take some risks and take some action to implement instead of just talking about it.

Posted by Lee Alley, www.BHhomes.INFO, Rapid City, Black Hills, SD at 7:06 PM  

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