BPC Green Homes Help Protect the Environment

Making the World Better for You, Your Children, and Grandchildren

BPC’s Green Building Practices are Sustainable

mother and children in nature Protecting the environment is important to ensure we maintain a world that is compatible with the ways you and future generations wish to live. A world with plenty of clean air, clean water, clean energy, biodiversity and the other resources we need.

Protecting the environment and building sustainable homes includes helping mitigate the impact of climate change, if not helping turn things around.

The Environmental Benefit of Living in a Truly Green Home is NOT about “Saving the Planet.” It’s about Saving Ourselves.

Our “planet” will be fine no matter what we do to the environment. But if we don’t take better care of the environment, our planet will not be a pleasant, easy or friendly place to live. And, unfortunately, as of yet, not enough is being done or done fast enough to prevent things from getting worse.

Environmental Problems are Obvious and Growing

Our environmental problems, like climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity are no longer theoretical or in the future.

These environmental problems are happening today. And, they are serious.

Furthermore, previous projections about how soon many of these problems will have severe consequences have proven to be wrong. They have underestimated the pace of the damage being done.

10 of the many environmental problems that are still getting worse:

All of these are interconnected:

The eastern part of the country is experiencing hotter summers, winters with more large snow storms, and more frequent, bigger and more violent storms and hurricanes.
Across the US and worldwide, there are more and worse storms and floods. 500 year and 1000 year storms and floods happen regularly no.
At the same time, many places around the world, like in the western half of our country are been experiencing the worst droughts in centuries. More and more areas have water shortages so severe they require water use restrictions.
Record-breaking high and sometimes deadly high temperatures are happening more frequently and for longer periods of time during the summer, spring and fall.
Many parts of the US are experiencing more and larger wildfires. Fires that destroy homes and wildlife. And fires that drive up insurance rates and costs to the public to fight them.
Because of rising sea levels, we have parts of Florida, for example, experiencing regular tidal flooding when the sun is out that they didn’t in the past. And, during Hurricane Sandy, parts of New York City were flooded for the first time.
Rising sea levels are already causing the loss of areas people live in. Because of a recent storm and rising sea levels, one of the smaller Hawaiian islands is now totally submerged.
Locally, as well as around the world, and within the lifetimes of you or your children and their children, billions if not trillions of dollars of land and property will be lost to rising sea levels and to efforts to protect areas like lower Manhattan and parts of Long Island from regularly flooding.
In some parts of the US and around the world we already have climate migrants. People leaving their homes, places of work and farms because climate change has made the areas they live no longer viable places to live.
Loss of biodiversity. We are losing plant and animal species at an extremely high rate. Thousands of species have gone extinct during our lifetime. Besides the ripple effect caused by any species going extinct, scientific and especially medical research relies on biodiversity for major breakthroughs.

Be Part of the Solution, Not the Problem

Building a Green Home is an Important Part of Being Part of the Solution

“We were surprised and delighted to find in Mike Trolle, of BPC Green Builders, a local builder who not only gave us the kind of house we wanted, but helped us figure out what that was in the first place. His ideas about what a house needs — and doesn’t need — were invaluable. He even helped us find an architect whose ideas were in sync with ours.”

Tom and Stacy, Westport, Connecticut

“We found your expertise in building science to be of great help in planning the project and in the selection of appropriate equipment and materials. BPC’s management of the subcontractors and communication with us always met our expectations. Moreover, BPC was conscientious and ethical in all aspects of the work. We would be pleased to recommend BPC without reservation.”

Christine and Monte, Bethany, Connecticut

“As architects, it has also been a sincere pleasure to work for Mike. He is an extraordinary client who has been able to utilize our skills and experience. The working relationship that we have developed is based upon trust and confidence, and has been tested by the realities and trials of construction.”

Thomas RC Hartman, AIA, Coldham Architects LLC

“BPC is in the forefront of this commitment. Our company has benefited from our professional and personal interaction with Mike and Chris Trolle. From client introduction to final walk through, the drive for total customer satisfaction is clear.”

Dean Demague, High Performance Energy Solutions

Green Homes are Environmentally Responsible

The design, construction, energy use, materials and systems of BPC homes helps protect the environment and makes the home and life more sustainable. Here are just 10 of the ways green homes help make the environment better:

Helps us reduce, and eventually eliminate, the use of non-renewable (fossil fuel) and climate-changing types of energy
Makes use of renewable and plentiful clean energy sources
Reduces your “carbon footprint” to help slow climate change
Reduces air and water pollution
Helps maintain clean water resources
Reduces the use of slow-growing and/or endangered natural resources
Helps protect biodiversity (plant and animal)
Generates less waste
Help make the environment less toxic
Use more local building materials, which reduces pollution and use of carbon-based fuels caused by unnecessary transportation

Allowing Technology to Improve and Costs to Go Down:

Because of increasing demand and economies of scale, as more homes are built using green building approaches, materials, systems, and technology, the costs of these building products go down. And, increased use of these products encourages new and improved technology to be developed. And this also lowers costs and improves performance.

For example: The cost of building and installing solar photovoltaic panels has dropped by about 90% in the past few years. At the same time, because of improving technology, solar panels convert sunlight to electrical power significantly more efficiently. This reduces the number of solar panels needed for a given home, which lowers the cost of installation and further lowers the cost of energy.

Solar panel efficiency is now so high that even in places like cloudy northern Europe, solar power is growing in leaps and bounds. The cost per kilowatt of electrical power from solar energy technology is now competitive with or better than from fossil fuels. And that is not even considering the hidden costs of fossil fuels, like pollution, health problems, environmental damage, climate change, etc.

Home storage battery technology has also improved greatly. As more people use batteries, costs are going down to the point they are now feasible in some cases. This means the excess clean energy your solar panels generate during the day, can be stored and used at night or on cloudy days. Not long from now whole house battery storage may become widely used.

Raising the Bar and Creating Demand:

Homes that are not built green and energy efficient are starting to become, will eventually become much less attractive to homeowners and home buyers. This is because these non-green, energy inefficient homes have higher operating costs.

Don’t believe non-green homes will become less attractive? Just think about how energy efficient gas, diesel, hybrid and now all-electric cars and trucks have pushed old gas guzzlers into extinction. Improved technology has given these energy efficient cars the same or better performance at a similar cost to the old muscle cars.

As more and more homes are built to green building standards, each additional green home will increase demand for, and the selling prices of homes that exceed conventional standards for comfort, durability, energy efficiency, and environmental responsibility.