Sustainability: The Final Frontier

Like you, businesses and government agencies are looking to cut energy costs. To help curb their energy appetite, NASA is planning on building the most energy efficient building in the entire federal government. The building, to be named Sustainability Base, should essentially power itself and use just 10 percent of the water that similar sized buildings use.

To hit those targets, plans call for eco-friendly choices like solar panels, geothermal wells, fuel cells, and water recycling. Managing everything will be a control system based on the computers that control NASA uses to control its spacecrafts. The system can take into account the weather, how many people are in the building and other factors to dial in the perfect amount of heating and cooling, which helps save big on energy consumption.

While it’s unlikely that you will have the opportunity (or funds) to build your own multi-million dollar green building from scratch, some of the advanced systems found in Tranquility Base (or smaller scale versions of them) should start showing up in new houses in the near future, so keep an eye out.