Darwin's Theories Blog

New Theories for a New Time

Another Climate Betrayal: Geos, Colorado

2021-11-11

Architect Norgert Klebl and his company designed and built the village of Geos, Colorado from the get-go as an all-electric, net-zero community, to show that people in that climate can live happily without polluting the air and damaging the climate by burning fossil fuels. Each home has rooftop solar, triple-glazed windows, energy-efficient appliances, LED lighting, and, to complete the mix, EV chargers in every garage. A few houses have geothermal heat pumps as well. People there live happily without fossil fuels.

Now, alas, a new developer has purchased the undeveloped part of the neighborhood and is building new homes heated with "natural" gas - a euphemism for Methane, one of the worst climate destroyers in use today when it escapes unburnt into the atmosphere - as it inevitably does as infrastructure ages. It burns cleaner than coal, "naturally", but still emits a lot of CO2 when burned, especially in small furnaces that lack carbon sequestration units (which work most economically at large scale).

Read the whole sordid tale on CNN. I don’t want to be accused of inciting a spamathon by publishing the development company CEO’s email address, but it’s currently posted with his picture on the home page of his company, Peak Development. Note that their web site doesn’t have a proper TLS certificate, relying on the hosting provider’s, so your browser may give some warning messages. Unsurprisingly given the controversy, they don’t even mention Geos as one of their development projects. If they take down the email address, their postal address is at the bottom of the page. If you care, feel free to read the CNN post in full to inform yourself of the facts, and compose a firm but polite notice to Chad at Peak Development.