Points of Interest | Green Energy News

March 21, 2004 – Vol.8 No.52

POINTS OF INTEREST.

A weekly collection of websites worth visiting.

Habitat for Humanity, working in 92 countries, is now completing a home every 26 minutes. That’s an astounding figure.

Since 1976 the organization has built more than 150,000 homes and expects by 2005 to provide shelter for 1 million people.

The premise is simple. The quality of life improves dramatically with a quality home. Habitat’s mission is to provide as many simple, decent affordable quality homes as it can.

Habitat homes - new, renovated, or rehabilitated - are constructed with Habitat funding, the sweat equity of the home buyer, the help of volunteers, and donations both in kind and financial. When complete families buy the homes with small down payments and zero-percent mortgages. Payments made by the new home owners go into the revolving Fund for Humanity which is used to build even more homes.

The latest trend in Habitat homes is to make them as energy-efficient - as green - as possible. Lowered energy costs help home owners and a contribution to a cleaner environment helps everyone.

Glendale Water and Power (GWP), a municipal utility company of Glendale California, has recently helped Habitat for Humanity build three, new, energy-efficient, partially solar-powered homes.

For its part GWP, through its Power Partnership Public Benefit Program, contributed $45,000 for the installation of 1-kilowatt solar photovoltaic systems on the homes. The solar systems provide about 50 percent of each home’s electrical needs. To keep energy costs down further, GWP also provided funding for the installation of whole house fans, dual pane low-E argon gas filled windows, high-efficiency heating, increased insulation levels and Energy Star (tm) appliances.

The families, who each invested 500 hours of their own labor building their home or homes of others, were able to buy the homes for $165,000 in a no-interest, no-profit mortgage. The homes have market value of $325,000.

This Habitat project is the third for GWP in Glendale. Eleven homes have now been completed. The utility has an additional $120,000 in funding earmarked for energy enhancements for eight more homes in the next two years. Those homes will have 1.5 kilowatt solar systems. Visit Habitat for Humanity at http://www.habitat.org/ , and GWP at http://www.ci.glendale.ca.us/government/gwp/index.htm