Energy and Environment Futures

I saw my first straw-bale house about 15 years ago in the western North Carolina mountains. The owner/builder was an organic farmer who grew vegetables for her neighbors through a community-supported agriculture system—another first for me. She and her friends were finishing the inside of the house, whose thick walls made a perfect resonating box for the Gregorian chants that fueled their work. Western North Carolina continues to be a leader in progressive, green and sustainable practices. That’s one of the reasons we chose to build High Cove here.

So we were excited to attend the Southern Energy & Environment Expo held recently near Asheville. It’s held in an agricultural arena, a real down-home event with a garage-business feel but some very sophisticated stuff. Like goats. Yeah, goats. Folks are using them for land management. They like to eat kudzu and poison ivy, and are a lot quieter than a herd of chainsaws, and a lot cuter that Roundup. We’ve invited the herd to visit High Cove next Spring.

Then there were Mike and Paula Moore of Ampmobile Conversions, who gave up their business of do-it-yourself solar water heaters after getting hooked on electric cars. They’ve put electric motors into several stock cars. Why? They say an electric motor costs just four cents a mile to run, with a lot less pollution and noise than a gas engine. Range is limited with today’s batteries—which are substantially unchanged from the batteries used in the first cars 100 years ago. But advances in battery technology are allowing a range of 100+ miles per charge.

Some old ideas were there, wearing their new, high-tech party clothes. Precisely-machined windmills connected to inverters and into the power grid generate supplemental power without a lot of complication for the homeowner. The windmill folks say this is the second-fastest payback on investment. The fastest is heating your water with the sun. You could get a sophisticated system installed by Sundance Power Systems for a few thousand dollars. Or you could find plans in BackHome Magazine and build one yourself for a few hundred bucks. Not as pretty and more sweat on your part, but also the satisfaction of washing it off in a shower made with your own hands.

A real driving force for the local sustainability culture is the Department of Technology at Appalachian State University in Boone. Among their activities, App State tests windmills on the brutal conditions of a local mountaintop, and has built a closed-loop biodiesel facility that uses solar heat and recycles all the byproducts. But you don’t have to go to App State to buy biodiesel; Blue Ridge Bio Fuels has seven retail stations in the Asheville area. They produce biodiesel for vehicles and home heating from used vegetable oil recycled from local restaurants.

Our heads full but our bellies empty, we stopped for dinner at Salsa’s (a gastronomic and local business success story and perhaps my favorite restaurant in Asheville) for some local food and a brew of a different sort—a microbrew from Asheville's Highland Brewing Co.

From the porch at High Cove,

Olga Ronay

From the Porch is a periodic missive from High Cove. High Cove is a new community in the mountains of western North Carolina, focused on the environment, the arts, and life-long learning. High Cove Visitors Center www.highcove.com