Dream House

Sustainable housing models are just a dream until residents can afford the true cost of going green

There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of sustainable housing design competitions and showpiece homes in Canada.

There is the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority’s (TRCA) Sustainable House Competition in Vaughan, Ontario. Numerous green homes have been built in Kitchener-Waterloo by ARISE Technologies and Cook Homes. Fleming College has a Sustainable Building and Design Program, which has developed several sustainable building projects, including a food bank in Haliburton and a classroom for the Kinark Outdoor Centre near Minden, Ontario.

The technologies these showpieces display are amazing — straw bale insulation, passive solar heating, solar hot water heating, rainwater collection for toilet and handwashing, off-grid renewable solar photovoltaic electricity, geothermal heating and cooling, green roofs, engineered wetland wastewater systems, flexible design and the use of locally produced and recycled materials.

These projects are meant to showcase the technologies available to homeowners who want to reduce their environmental impact; offer opportunities for contractors to become familiar with sustainable technologies; and, of course, create acceptance for new-and what are sometimes old-green building concepts.

The technologies of these demonstration homes display are needed. Canada’s residential sector has to find a greener plateau, especially in its single-family home market. With transportation accounting for 32 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and the residential sector is accounting for an additional 15 percent, how Canada constructs its homes and neighbourhoods play a significant role in whether GHG reductions will be realized.

However, in the debate over sustainable housing design, one thing comes up again and again — cost. What’s the cost and what’s the payback?

Sure, the few who can afford to make the investment and shift to sustainable housing technologies do so. But the majority can’t afford it, and many who can aren’t willing to invest. So the public goes along with their lives oblivious to new technologies or fascinated by the possibility of innovation, yet knowing it is out of their reach.

While there is a need to acclimatize people to the possibilities, as showcase construction projects do, there is an even greater need to make sustainable technologies cheaper and available to the masses. If not, sustainable housing may end up relegated to a novelty item reserved for those who can afford to be self-righteous in their reduced environmental impact.

The only way to realize this is through mass production. The conventional home design makes its gravy by being fast and easy to construct. The design is simple and accepted; the materials readily available. If sustainable housing design is going to green the residential sector, it has to mimic this reality.

Unfortunately, the route to mass-produced, accessible designs and price reductions is through the creation of a mass-market. And the only way the market for sustainable housing design is going to develop is if people are forced to pay the actual cost of their resource consumption. If those who can afford to pay did so, costs could be brought down, designs made more acceptable, and the technology more accessible thanks to mass production.

Electricity is a prime example. In Ontario, consumers pay the “average” cost over-time for power, which means they are insulated from the spot market price and lose any incentive to conserve energy at peak periods. But even this “average” cost over-time doesn’t account for the numerous subsidies doled out to producers; financing agreements; removal of liability (as is the case with nuclear); lack of accounting for replacement costs; and the negative externalities involved in electricity generation, including the environmental and healthcare costs of dirty production, and long-term storage costs of nuclear waste.

With all of these subsidies and the lack of visibility of market prices, there is little reason for homeowners to make investments in a solar array. In the case of the Cook Homes project in Waterloo, it resulted in an added cost of $15,000 to $20,000 — and that was a subsidized price!

The payback is too long, keeping the technology out of reach for most people, and a novelty for those with the means and desire.

The lack of true-cost accounting in household resource-use goes way beyond electricity. It covers all aspects of home living, including waste, potable water, wastewater and stormwater. Using cisterns and rain barrels to collect stormwater for reuse, as the TRCA’s Sustainable Home will, is a fantastic rehashing of historical technologies that were used before municipalities started hiding the cost of stormwater sewers and treatment on homeowners’ property tax bills. Citizens do pay for stormwater controls, but, again, the price is averaged, keeping the true cost hidden.

One generous neighbour may rip up their driveway to install a rain barrel, but that doesn’t mean they’ll pay less than the family next door who has paved their entire front lawn. According to a recent report for the TRCA, there’s a 30-year return-on-investment for a rain barrel under the current water rate structure. That would be a lot different if people were forced to pay the true cost of stormwater controls based on the amount of impervious surface on their property and how much water they contribute to the system.

Likewise, the payback on that rain barrel and the reuse of stormwater would be a lot more economical if municipalities implemented demand management based on variable rates for their potable water systems and accounted for future water supplies.

Some municipalities are making strides in true cost accounting. Waste management systems and sanitary systems are increasingly being treated as utilities, with the true cost of the systems being reflected in the household cost. Unfortunately, just as many other municipalities are slow to respond and make their residential ratepayers pay the true cost of their consumption.

Asking that people pay for the true cost of service is not about penalizing them. It’s about fairness, making people pay for their consumption. Our current model of subsidizing the resource-use of homeowners is sabotaging our chances of creating a more sustainable way of living. What’s more, it keeps all of these green technologies and showpiece homes out of reach from the mass-market that so desperately needs them.