This is done by the design, and by altering the phase-change properties of the material, renewable tree-farm wood, so it acts as a thermal battery. In the renewal process (already under way by forest agencies worldwide) carbon is sequestered. A new building component, laminated wood Green Building Blocks®, takes the place of stick-frame wall construction with it’s layered coverings and insulation. These blocks can be used, and re-used in perpetuity, like the bricks from the Roman Coliseum, so they are unlikely to be land-filled, and the carbon stays sequestered. Using the daily board-foot growth rate of the forests, the wood in a typical Enertia® home will have renewed in less than a minute, so there is no strain on the forests. It is wood used for Bio-Energy, but without burning. In the 1980’s, I began to develop a building system to take advantage of energy storage in wood. In the equations, a certain unit kept cropping up, so I coined a name for it. Enertia® is energy from a Shift-in-Time. In this case the energy is thermal. But, once you grasp the concept, you notice Enertia everywhere: in batteries, gravity, flywheel effects, in the phase-change of water at the poles, in all of life. Enertia is an exciting new energy carrier, joining electricity and Hydrogen. It introduces a new way of thinking about energy- free and clean energy from a shift-in-time, the fourth dimension. There is a growing Green Building movement- but the strategies are piecemeal and primarily add-ons. This is a fully engineered, integrated system, and has a sequestration component that hits the carbon problem from both ends. Other houses are static- this one is Dynamic, even though it has no moving parts. The Enertia® house is alive, it breathes. It takes care of its occupants, not the other way around.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

Enertia® Homes are already in production- albeit on a small scale, in our family owned mill in Youngsville, North Carolina. More than 80 homes have been built in 25 states.
You can see them at http://enertia.com

We want to get them into mass-production, for the economy-of-scale, and ability to customize quickly and cheaply using computer-controlled milling machines. Multiple factories, closer to the end users, will reduce transportation. There are subtle differences in design based on the climate of the site, so local mills can better focus on those differences.

Currently, the Youngsville Enertia® home factory is the only mill doing this. We will use the prize money to seek and find manufacturers worldwide, to make these homes on a volume scale. And to educate and train builders in the new technique.

In three years we hope to have at least ten new mills making our system. And causing a stir in the house building industry which is starving for new ideas.

The timing is advantageous. There is a surge of interest in Green Building, saving energy and sequestering carbon. This system is about as Green as it Gets. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umluFQRN0WM)

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

Houses are a major contributor to greenhouse gases. Building an Enertia® home slows the pollution while the material sequesters airborne carbon. Green Building Blocks® are valuable and unlikely to be disposed of.

Each Enertia® home can be re-partitioned into any use: multi-family, commercial, or vertical-farm greenhouse. The atmosphere space can be used for future wires, pipe, and cables.

Design is based on biomimicry of the atmosphere, and earth’s thermal inertia. Materials are renewed. The resins are seeded by the same process in which water droplets form. Every Enertia® home is an earth in miniature.

The feasibility of solid wood houses began in the 1300’s, the same time as the Little Ice Age. I have patented technology to turn any species into phase change wood.

There are Enertia® homes in 25 states that can be instrumented and tested.

Replication by CAD-CAM is instantaneous. The 25 states cover about 12 climatic conditions. Scaling up is unlimited; more wood is more efficient.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

This technology has been my life’s work. I used earth’s problem, the Greenhouse Effect, to heat the houses- by adding a a small atmosphere around each home (US Patent 4, 621,614 ). Then I found a way to alter the wood, at a nano-level, to enhance the storage and release of energy (US Patent 6,933,016 ) These laminated “Green Building Blocks®” replace the multiple materials and construction-steps of conventional building with one structural-and-solar storage, component screwed into place with one tool. Projected to mass-production- the material costs and labor savings are enormous.

The technology has won the US-DOE Innovation Award, an Enertia® home was named “Most Innovative Structure of the Twentieth Century” in 1999. The system was named the Modern Marvel of 2007, and was named as one of Time magazine’s Inventions of the Year 2007 issue. Enertia® has been featured on Discovery Channel’s Eco-Tech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4i01gZweh4), Invention Nation, and NPR “Science Friday”.

We have a factory in place and it was designed with CAD-CAM automation in mind. 50 designs are done, and many are in CAD already. We have many inquiring about representing and building the system when it becomes widely available.