Today’s Wall Street Journal writes about homeowners who are running into trouble with homeowners associations when they try to increase their home’s energy efficiency with things like new windows, wind turbines and solar panels.
In Arizona, a man was recently ordered by his homeowners’ association to take down a solar water-heating device from his roof or face a daily fine. In upstate New York, neighbors fought the installation of a wind turbine tower on a resident’s 11-acre property, delaying the project by nearly a year. Even former vice president and outspoken environmental advocate Al Gore had trouble getting solar panels and a geothermal unit approved for his Nashville home. A local zoning board initially wouldn’t consider the application for the solar panels. It then took an appeal, several redesigns and a property inspection before they were approved eight months later. (The community recently revised its ordinance to allow the devices.)
David Bannatyne was tired of the drafty, stubborn windows in his early 19th-century home in Concord, Mass., and was especially fed up with paying his $5,000 heating bill each winter.
But when he applied for permission to put in 17 new, energy-efficient windows last fall, the town’s Historic Districts Commission denied his request, concerned that the windows wouldn’t blend in with the home’s historic character. After some debate, Mr. Bannatyne agreed to restore the windows instead. While he says they’re now easier to open, he says his heating bills haven’t changed. “I’m not doing the global warming issue any favors by keeping these windows,” he says.
Environmental groups say that the often burdensome and contentious process for those who live in regulated developments or historic districts prevents more people from making energy-saving changes to their homes. “It’s a hurdle. If people know there’s such a delay, they say, ‘Forget about it,’ ” says Nils Petermann, a research associate with the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
The clashes come as states and utilities are increasingly offering incentives for energy-efficient improvements. At the same time, the number of designated historic districts and homeowners associations continues to grow, and with them the number and scope of local governing bodies that can restrict the changes people make to home exteriors.
Popularity: 2% [?]
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Another solution is to place a solar electric system on the ground with appropriate plants and flowers and make the array larger to offset the the energy usage for inefficiency of the building structure.