Biography
ERIC DOUB founded award-winning Ecofutures Building in 1994 and is a nationally recognized expert in super-efficient and healthy homes.
Since completing construction of his family's net-zero energyProducing as much energy on an annual basis as one consumes on site, usually with renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics or small-scale wind turbines. home Solar Harvest in 2005, Eric has made it his company’s objective to match or exceed this precedent-setting home’s verified carbon-neutral performance. Ecofutures currently has several NZEHs under way, including two homes with a from-plans HERSIndex or scoring system for energy efficiency established by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) that compares a given home to a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Reference Home based on the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code. A home matching the reference home has a HERS Index of 100. The lower a home’s HERS Index, the more energy efficient it is. A typical existing home has a HERS Index of 130; a net zero energy home has a HERS Index of 0.
The older versions of the HERS index were based on a scale that was largely just the opposite in structure--a HERS rating of 100 represented a net zero energy home, while the reference home had a score of 80. There are issues that complicate converting old to new or new to old scores, but the basic formula is: New HERS index = (100 - Old HERS score) * 5. rating of zero, one of which is to be the region's first Beyond Zero Energy/Cradle-to-Cradle home. Doub is a regular contributor to conferences, committees, and publications including the USGBCUnited States Green Building Council (USGBC). Organization devoted to promoting and certifying green buildings. USGBC created the LEED rating systems./ASIDThe American Society of Interior Designers is a trade association representing the interior design professional community. ASID partnered with USGC to develop the REGREEN program, a green residential remodeling program (see www.regreenprogram.org).'s ReGreen Guidelines.
Green Story
Parents of Character
In the 1950s, Eric Doub's father studied Taoist texts in the original Chinese while he waited in Army foxholes overseas; he also protested the H-bomb. Back in the states and two decades later Doub's mother, as a Girl Scout leader, retrieved a road-kill deer, then had her charges skin the animal, tan the hide by traditional methods, and make moccasins and drums. She also studied outdoor survival skills and spent 10 days in the Idaho backcountry with only a pocketknife. When it came to suburban survival, however, she drove the car that Doub's father refused to acknowledge as their own—he rode his bike, took buses and trains, or walked.
"With parents like that," Doub says, "I could have either run the other direction, or followed in their worldview footsteps. I did the latter."
As a teenager, Doub believed he would never own a car. He made up flyers that said, "Did you have to drive here to get exercise?" and put them on every car parked at the local recreation center. When he entered Stanford, he built himself an undergraduate degree he calls “Sustainable U.S. Resource and Security Policies.” His 1980 application to the school foretold the direction his studies would take, saying, in part:
"Current events make it desperately clear: We’re in transition to a post-petroleum civilization. War in the Middle East, the arms race, and revolution in Third World countries all point to a reorganization of the planet’s resources. And American lifestyles and consumption are at the center of the crisis. When good, obedient, middle-class Americans—those who guard the system—cannot buy gas or pay the heating bill or get enough to eat, our society will turn upside down. Historian Howard Zinn calls this the Revolt of the Guards. When this happens I want to be a citizen who knows, who has researched, who has hope: for a sane, decentralized, democratic energy system where the power is in the hands of the people and in biomassOrganic waste that can be converted to usable forms of energy such as heat or electricity, or crops grown specifically for that purpose.
, efficiency, hydro, wind, solar, and cogeneration.”
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