Will open source change Canada? Democratizing sustainable housing in Canada (part 2)
by Matt Munóz
Will democratizing sustainable housing be enough to change Canada? It’s too early to tell, but there’s a start. Open source can make sustainable designs available. Nobody owns it, everybody can use it, and anybody can improve it. The Now House is one sustainable housing design project created by one small team. What would happen if one hundred teams created projects like this?
Toronto-based firm Work Worth Doing created Now House™, a project whose mission is to turn a 60-year-old WWII house into a near zero energy home—one that produces as much energy as it uses. The idea for this one house, coupled with the benefits of open source, has the potential to affect millions of homes and demonstrate how open source thinking can be applied to one of the biggest problems facing the world today. Canada shoulders its own share of this burden and is currently way off-track from meeting its Kyoto Protocol goals.
Over the next ten years, how could open source thinking continue to play a role in the Now House project?
The process for retrofitting one house to become a near zero energy home, will serve as the basis for future phases of the project.
The homes within a wartime housing community are similar in structure, making the national rollout of the Now House model possible. There are an estimated one million wartime homes across Canada (see figure 1). As the project gains momentum, the scale will necessitate the participation of many different players located throughout the nation. Creating an open source platform allows multiple partners–builders, governments and homeowners–to contribute input and provide resources.
Sources for the data in figure 2: In the hypothetical rollout to all existing houses, the retrofitting teams could apply their wartime housing knowledge to other single-detached homes (see figure 2). By creating a platform for participation, there’s an opportunity for a community of collaborators to build on past work because of open source knowledge. Could this knowledge empower Now House participants to create a sustainable, profitable marketplace while positively changing Canada’s GHG emissions? Canadians may want to spend more time saving the environment given their current ecological footprint, which would require four planet Earths to sustain if everyone on the planet lived like them. It takes 7.6 global hectares of resources to support each Canadian according to the latest World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report (see figure 3). An open source platform for sustainable housing could pull groups from all over Canada and provide them with vibrant connections and resources through which they can share ideas, best practices and make a living through creating near zero energy homes. The Now House team thinks that small changes can equal big results. Small changes and collaboration on a national scale through an open source platform is one way to do just that.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Now House is a fantastic idea! I am a very strong supporter and advocate of open source and firmly believe it is the panacea for problems being faced by us globally.
I would like to contribute to this project. Please list me as a volunteer. I am based in Ontario Canada.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:02 am
I love Canada. That’s good information. Thanks!