Forget about a hybrid in every garage. How about:

•A windmill in every backyard

•A solar space heater in every family room

•A geothermal or wood-pellet furnace in every basement

•High-tech compressive energy audits for every house, with interiors coated with green (as in environmentally correct) paint.

These are no longer the fantasies of environmental idealists. They are all part of the dream of a growing sustainable home energy industry.

Just a few years ago, only homeowners with environmental passion even considered most of these alternatives for their homes. Most people might weatherize or splurge for insulation, but few would invest thousands to save few bucks on their utility bills.

But with the price of home heating oil climbing to more than $3 a gallon, those few bucks have added up to hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars of savings each year. Combine those economic factors with increased concerns over global warming and the growing perception that the carnage in the Middle East is related to our dependence on foreign oil, and you have a perfect storm that is starting to sweep away all resistance against investing in a more sustainable home.

Add a few rebates and tax breaks, and suddenly an investment in your home might not only feel good, it might earn a lot more money in energy savings than you would ever get these days on the stock market.

On Dec. 1, representatives from the sustainable energy industry met at a conference in Manchester. But before they did, the Business Review tracked down many of them and asked them about their business, only to hear words like "skyrocketing" and "taking off."Geothermal Water Energy Distributors sells geothermal heat pumps to more than 200 installers, architects and engineers throughout New England and New York. The company just moved into an 8,000-square-foot building in Hampstead, double the space it occupied in Plaistow.

Business is growing some 50 percent a year, said Carl Orio, chairman and founder, and the biggest growth has been in residential business, which accounts for about two-thirds of the thousand pumps distributed last year.

Thermal pumps mine the energy under your home. The earth is warmer than air in the winter and cooler than it in the summer. While the temperature differential might not seem as high as what you would like, by using large enough ducts, water can be heated to 130 degrees, enough to make any house feel comfortable, Orio said.

Geothermal furnaces are not cheap - Orio says that they would cost at least $12,000 installed in an average home - and the energy is not free. You have to pay for the electricity to pump out that free energy under your home. The electric load at least is off peak, because the pump does use up less energy than central air conditioning.

And the operating costs are a third the cost of burning oil, Orio says. For some homes, that would add up to as little as a five-year payback, even less if you already have a well that can be used for this purpose.

Wood
Demand for wood pellets "is just skyrocketing" said Charlie Niebling, general manager of New England Wood Pellet in Jaffrey, which will go from producing 40,000 tons of pellets to 200,000 in just three years.

But while pellet stoves are all the rage, Niebling says that the real growth of the future is in furnaces. Right now, most people still consider pellets as a backup, not wanting to take time to load their furnace and clean out the ashes. But only half of that perception is true. Pellets can now be delivered in bulk into an automatic feeder to your furnace, much in the same way that oil is delivered into your tank. You still have to clean out the ash, but it might be worth it, because with the efficiencies of the new pellet furnaces, wood is one of the cheapest heating fuels around, according to a spreadsheet supplied by Niebling.

The up-front costs - $5,000 to $12,000 installed, estimates Niebling - are lower than most geothermal furnaces. Pellet furnaces do depend on electricity for that efficiency, though it doesn't use up nearly as much as a thermal pump.

While you are still burning a carbon-based fuel that could go up in price, pellets also have a feel-good aspect to them. First, emissions are lower than burning oil. Second, wood is renewable and pellets are created out of the leftover and scrap wood from trees that probably would have been cut down for their timber value anyway. Finally, wood has to be local, because it would be too costly to transport otherwise.

"This way, production is closer to the point of consumption," said Niebling. "It's like buying local food."

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