Home Design Trends For 2019: Revolution Green

Roof-mounted solar panels and wind turbines are the new must have for the environmentally conscious. However, according to the Royal Academy of Engineering., this elitist fad contributes only a miniscule amount towards meeting Britain’s carbon reduction goals. However, wind turbines are popping up everywhere on urban homes and offices as a way for people to boast about their ‘green’ ways and eco-conscious contributions.

Even though these technologies are peddled as not only environmentally friendly, but cost effective as well, builders will waste thousands, if not millions, of pounds mounting these supposed efficient machines unless the Government will revise its building regulations on homes and offices.

Doug King, an Engineering professor at the University of Bath, says that wind turbines on city homes actually use more energy than they produce, more often than not, rendering them energy guzzlers rather than the green machines they portray themselves to be.

Field trials completed last year by a government-funded Energy Saving Trust confirmed this. The trials showed that even the most fruitful building-mounted wind turbines in cities and suburban areas created only £26 of electricity per year. A vast amount of the machines were actually consumers of electricity because these machines need to draw power from the grid during times of low wind. With this in mind, how could this new technology possibly be considered environmentally friendly?

Professor King proposes that the British government’s goal of having new homes carbon-neutral by 2016 should be reduced in favor of builders and developers making charitable donations to wind farms and other renewable energy projects. “Wind turbines and solar cells on the roof achieve little or nothing and are what I describe as eco-bling. It’s just about trying to say to the general public, ‘I’m being good, I’m helping the environment’. The things that save the money are not done, because they are not sexy.” King is the writer of a detailed informative report on low carbon buildings, and says that these dwellings could be made more energy efficient simply by installing high quality insulation and employing methods of trapping rays of sunlight.

King also explains that offices would need to be completely redesigned to reduce energy use and muddle through expected power cuts caused by the aging power stations the Government has failed to replace. He accuses the Government of failing to live by their own rules and recommendations.

The fact of the matter is, in order to have the energy efficient effects they intended, wind turbines on urban homes would have to be so big that their vibration would cause damage the dwelling on which they are installed. Professor King said that placing micro generation devices on your home would only cut back emissions by a miniscule amount and could cost over £10,000. His proposal is a substitute policy under which builders and developers would counterbalance the entire emissions of new homes by instead making contributions of £3,000 per household towards wind farms. Then we could truly be on the path to a more ‘green’ lifestyle. It is considered among the best building solution for greener environment.