‘Green’ mountain luxury living
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It all started when Will Guercio, Jim's son and Caribou Cos.' director of real estate development, bumped into a German couple. "They said, ‘We have great pre-fab, energy-efficient homes.' I was like, ‘Sure, sure.' But a light bulb went off in my head: ‘This is where we're going - the need to be green,' so I actually flew to Germany to see what they were talking about," he recalls.
Currency exchange rates killed the idea of importing German housing, but Will Guercio left chagrined at Europe's huge green technology lead over the United States. Then he met Davide Picard, president of Boulder-based Zero Energy LLC and soon to be the project's builder.
"He had experience working with what I saw in Germany, so I go, ‘I want this to be a green community. We need this. We need to set the bar,'" Will Guercio says. "Also, I wanted to educate people that they could have a custom home and still be green."
One goal of Caribou Ridge is to generate enough of its own energy to sell it to Xcel.
The key to this ambition is the development's solar farm, an array of photovoltaic cells to be constructed on the ridge above Caribou Ridge's 34 homes.
"We worked extensively with Xcel Energy in conjunction with the solar power system design so that we could back-feed the whole program," Picard says. "When you talk about the zero energy, what that means is that we have solar power, that we are making thermal energy that we are harnessing and so by the end of the year your costs are zero."
Picard cites a study he says indicates that the sales value of a green home is 20 percent to 30 percent higher than that of a conventional dwelling. "That said, when you look at the rate of return on a renewable energy home in a self-sustainable format, the rate of return is in the 60 percent to 80 percent arena," including Xcel rebates, tax incentives and the like.
The project's green-onomics has lots of other dimensions. For one, Will Guercio's vision of a zero-energy custom home community couldn't work without commensurate aesthetics. That's where Denver-based 4240 Architecture came in.
Readers Respond
Author: Hey, lighten up about Nederland's quirkyness! Most of the good folks there delight in that, and I disagree that most want the Frozen Dead Guy fest to turn into something "less weird." There's enough normality to go around, and as a culture we all need something entertainingly strange in our lives. We certainly don't need Nederland to turn into a suburban bedroom community for Boulder.
By Paul Hill on 2010 03 30Leave a comment