I recognize all the benefits of green building, but, as I’ve never owned any kind of building, I’ve never explored a homeowner’s eco-friendly options in much depth, or been to a conference targeted at the industry.

Right from the opening plenary, visionaries (led in prominence by Steve Wozniak) hammered home the feeling that the green building industry is really at a tipping point where a cascade of exponential growth is possible. In this respect, I didn’t feel too out of place. I had heard a similar message at every niche conference I’d been to since starting Green Options. Indeed, the implications of a true transition to a sustainable economy are the same for green pioneers in every industry. If you can provide any product or service in a more environmentally responsible way, and do it as cheap or cheaper than the old way, you are the future.

So what? People have been saying we’re at a tipping point for years… They’re just another kind of salesman trying to drum up business, right? Even if it’s growing, it’s just a bubble, like everything else.

Wrong.

In the many industries that demand consistent natural resource inputs (energy, building, transportation), people have been doing things essentially the same way for a long time. And entrepreneurs are finding solutions that preserve all of the advantages of our unsustainable practices, but with less toxicity, fewer resource inputs, and beautiful outputs. Any industry can optimize a business model for more than one variable–say, profit AND impact on the system as a whole.

Some of the exhibitors did just that.

There were multiple firms that recycle packaging styrofoam into insulated concrete forms. The best one I saw was Apex-Block. Some might object to the use of styrofoam in any "green" building, but my take on it is that we need cost-effective, energy-efficient solutions now, and there’s no shortage of styrofoam being produced and thrown away that none of us can do much about at the moment, so… get real.

There are were also some "breakthroughs" whose green-ness I question: both of the two ethanol-burning fireplace booths I visited were more concerned with emphasizing the simple, sleek, user-friendliness of ethanol as a fireplace fuel than where the fuel came from. I found it ironic that 10 minutes later I was listening to a pre-eminent architecture professor use his Powerpoint to contrast decreasing crop yields from global warming against our policy of sacrificing food for fuel.

It didn’t surprise me too much that my fireplace salesmen friends weren’t up on the significant disadvantages of corn-based ethanol. All day, the fragmentation of the green building professionals I saw at the conference struck me; it seemed a little like most of them didn’t know there were that many others out there. As they grow, WCG and conferences like it continue to help refugees from the old economy find their place in the new.

While it may have gotten more notice in the news recently that Steve Wozniak was recently ticketed for driving his Prius at 104 mph (that’s 166 kph), but he has also been thinking about an energy efficient house. At the end of a recent interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke of an unfulfilled dream of his:

"I have a long dream to build my own house in a very energy-efficient approach. That’s going to be very soon. It uses the right kind of wood that serves as a heater and as an air conditioner, combined with some other techniques in how the wood is assembled to operate energy life pressure. You don’t have to add energy into a house after you build it. I love that concept. It’s like the way I used to make computers. I want to build it myself. That’s a project that could be finished this summer, next summer, but not too far from now."

Wozniak gave a longer interview to ECNMag.com about his plans and his thoughts about energy efficient design. Based on this conversation, Wozniak is looking at using rammed-earth for constructing the home. He is also interested in the Enertia house and the claims that the wood used provides tremendous energy efficiency. (Jetson Green has some information about an Australian rammed earth home (pictured below) as an example in an article on his blog.)

Wozniak also discussed the energy to be used inside this home. He wants to be able to have computers and an LCD TV (better efficiency than a plasma screen) and efficient appliances. He also hopes that LED lights become more widely available.

However, he also perpetuates the myth that solar cells take more energy to produce than they can provide over their lifetime. "I worry that if it takes more energy to make and install a solar cell than it returns in its lifetime, then it’s a loser." That may have been the case back in the days when he was designing calculator chips for Hewlett Packard, but contemporary solar panels pay back the energy required to manufacture them in just a few years. (Ask the EcoGeek told us that solar panels provide about 5 times as much energy over their lifetime as it takes to produce them.) And in California, where Wozniak is looking at building this dream home, electricity costs make solar power a very reasonable and cost-effective option.

Wozniak isn’t looking to preach his efficiency to others, but he recognizes that his project is likely to draw attention, and the publicity could help provoke others to consider more efficient choices for themselves. Like any good engineer, Wozniak talks about looking at the total energy picture. An electric car isn’t more efficient because it doesn’t use any gasoline; that’s a spurious comparison. But if the electric car uses less energy from coal to produce the electricity, then, in the wider picture, it is more efficient. That’s the level of efficiency Wozniak is after, and that is a good model for the approaches to efficiency that we all need to consider.