By Lauren McSherry
All it takes is a little nudge. That’s what Los Altos Hills officials are hoping as they move ahead with an ordinance to encourage residents to go solar.
The ordinance, still being drafted, would apply only to new homes over a certain size. It would not apply to remodels.
Under the ordinance, new homes larger than 6,000 square feet would be required to beat California’s Title 24 energy standards by 25 percent. The ordinance would call for homeowners to either implement energy efficient design features or generate some electricity on site with a solar power system, said Peter Evans, committee chairman. The ordinance would require architects and builders to give residents an estimate of how much energy their new home will use before it is built.
“The biggest benefit is that it pays for itself,” Evans said. Los Altos Hills could become a state leader with the new ordinance in light of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious pledge for California to have 1 million solar-powered homes by 2018.
“This is still a pretty new idea,” said Jill Boone, of San Mateo County’s RecycleWorks, which has held sustainable building seminars in Los Altos Hills.
Boone said restricting the energy used by large homes makes sense because they use more energy per capita and consequently put more stress on the energy grid.
She added that cities with large homes could use up to two to three times more energy than those with average-sized residences.
Planning Director Carl Cahill said it probably wouldn’t take much to make large homes use less energy because most technologies used in new homes are intended to improve energy efficiency and the requirements under the ordinance would be based on the EPA’s Energy Star program.
“What (the committee) is asking the council to adopt is a program that is already in existence with all of the bugs already worked out,” he said.
Mayor Breene Kerr first proposed the plan to reduce energy consumption earlier this year as a way to help solve California’s energy supply-and-demand problems at the local level.
Demand since the 2002 energy crisis is back to record levels, he said.
Kerr’s idea stemmed from his work as a member of the new town hall committee.
The 8,000-square-foot town hall - meant to set an example in energy and water conservation for the town - is about the size of most Los Altos Hills homes. The average home is between 5,000 and 6,000 square feet.
Los Altos resident Dick Swanson, the founder of SunPower Corporation, which supplied the solar power system for the Hills’ new town hall, praised officials for their forethought.
