Thanks to efforts by Habitat for Humanity and the St. Paul Port Authority in Minnesota, a former golf course is being converted into a groundbreaking 147-unit community — with no gas to be found anywhere, Fast Company reported.
Natural gas or methane gas has long been a source of energy for kitchen stoves, water heaters, and sometimes other appliances. However, it's detrimental to human health and also pollutes the atmosphere, trapping heat on our overheating planet.
That's why in The Heights, there will be no gas, but only electric appliances.
"Early on, we identified a very high goal of [becoming] a net zero community," Port Authority president and CEO Todd Hurley said, per Fast Company. "Everything we have been working on has been steering toward getting to net zero."
To achieve "net zero," producing no heat-trapping gas pollution, The Heights will rely on solar power and geothermal heating. Habitat for Humanity already has donors lined up who will contribute enough solar shingles to cover 60% of the community's energy needs, and it will use Xcel Energy incentive programs to buy more to cover the remainder.
Port Authority first purchased the former golf course in 2019, with an eye toward light industrial development. However, it worked with city planners on a comprehensive plan that included housing.
"We are a land developer, a brownfield land developer, and one of our missions is to add jobs and tax base around the creation of light industrial jobs," Hurley said, per Fast Company.
After parceling out the land, Port Authority sold the housing development sections to private developer Sherman Associates for construction. The new community will feature a combination of low-income, affordable, and market-rate housing to provide homes for a wide range of people, and will be one of the largest net-zero projects in the state.
Sherman Associates brought in Habitat for Humanity and JO Companies, a Black-owned affordable housing developer.
Mike Robertson, a Habitat program manager, told Fast Company, "The Heights is the first time that we've dived into doing an all-electric at scale. We have confidence that these houses will perform how they were modeled."
While this development is larger than most that follow the net-zero ethos, other builders have created stunning passive houses that generate as much power as they use.
Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Cool Picks
