Speaking of greening, I've been to a few workshops on low budget & not so low budget ways to improve on new construction & existing buildings, I was surprised at the variety of available methods but for me the most impressive was geothermal heating & cooling! It's expensive to retrofit, less expensive to include in a new structure, definitely not low budget I believe a retrofit on a 2500-3000 sf house can be $25,000, but something like 15G for a new house. It takes such an impressive chunk of your footprint away that we've already decided if we build in the rural area we're considering for retirement it'll definitely be in the plan. We'd definitely have a wood stove or 2 to supplement as we're looking about 4 hours northeast of here and it gets cold, but with wood stove supplements instead of efficient natural gas that usually supplements geothermal in the city we'll have heating & cooling with only the fossil fuel of a 120v outlet or less

/end hippie gushing