Excellent Idea
written by Mark Mathson , April 25, 2007

This is an excellent idea, and a good model for future development. The photos show that the house is also well designed.

...
written by Survival Acres , April 26, 2007

There is no such thing as a "zero carbon house". The resources to build such a house would have to be extracted from the ground, processed, transported and assembled, requiring the involvement of thousands of people, factories and trucks. How can that be "zero carbon"?

It is disengenous to claim that "business as usual" will do anything at all towards cleaning up our environment or lowering our carbon footprint.

The only zero carbon house is a natural cave, or mud-wattle hut built by hand and transported to the building site by animal or humans.

The concept of economic development and growth is contradictory towards sustainable living. Sustainable living requires local resources. Houses assembled from materials transported thousands of miles do not even remotely qualify.

zero carbon ~ an aspiration
written by martin , August 17, 2007

I broadly agree with Survival Acres, a truly "zero carbon house" is perhaps more an aspiration that a reality -- if a building is able to payback the carbon 'invested' in it through the generation of zero carbon energy being fed back to the national grid, then maybe the "some-where near zero carbon house" is possible.

Project funder/originator.
written by Michael Rea. , January 01, 2008

There seems to be a misunderstanding on what the project is demonstrating. The house does not use any fossil fuel to run. The project was not funded by Energy For Sustainable Development. The funding has been done by Michael and Dorothy Rea and 30 sponsors.

Zero Carbon / Zero Inputs
written by Mark T. , February 01, 2008

The concept here is not to say that we can produce a house out of ether, but rather that the house does not consume energy or use resources or emit CO2 or other chemicals into the environment after construction.

In this way, it's possible to have a zero-emission house by simply having an apartment block with no power, no water or any facilities, the trick is to achieve the same effect environmentally, without having to reduce our standards of living to nil in order to achieve this goal.