The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
Current Situation: Where We are on Net Zero by 2050
Can you truly prepare for the unpredictable power of hurricanes, and are we genuinely ready to meet the ambitious "net zero by 2050" goal? These are the questions we tackle in this eye-opening episode of the Carolina Contractor Show. We start with a timely reminder about hurricane preparedness, emphasizing the importance of acting early before storms escalate. Then, we dive into a controversial discussion about the net zero movement, scrutinizing its motivations and potential for corruption. For homeowners eager to make an impact, we offer practical advice on integrating solar and wind energy solutions into their homes, while also stressing the need for large-scale changes in the industrial sector, which accounts for a significant portion of energy consumption.
Next, we confront the daunting challenges of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The skyrocketing demand for critical minerals and the associated environmental degradation are just the tip of the iceberg. We delve into the often overlooked labor and environmental costs of mining in regions like Mexico, revealing the stark contrast between political promises and practical feasibility. Furthermore, we examine the infrastructure deficits and the prohibitive costs of upgrading the US electric grid, comparing these to the more cost-effective nuclear power. On a more personal note, we offer homeowners realistic steps to reduce their energy consumption without breaking the bank.
Finally, we explore the art of designing and constructing energy-efficient homes. Simple design choices, like optimal window orientation and balanced insulation, can significantly boost a home's efficiency. We discuss the benefits of modern HVAC systems such as heat pumps and geothermal units, and the advantages of tankless water heaters for domestic use. Hear about the transformative power of solar shingles through a compelling case study of a lake house, and understand why not every home can achieve net zero due to orientation constraints. However, impactful measures like installing solar shingles can still make a substantial difference, helping homeowners reduce utility bills while contributing positively to the environment.
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, general Contractor, donnie Blanchard.
Speaker 1:Donnie, do you remember a while back we did a show that was about hurricane prep.
Speaker 1:I sure do I remember it. Well, what do you think is the amount of days when a hurricane or a tropical depression or just that disturbance coming off Africa shows up and starts moving across the Atlantic, how many days before we start paying attention to it? I'd say three or four days. I would say that's about right. And that's when you start thinking, well, maybe it's going to impact me, I'll get water and bread and what other stuff? And ratting down the hatches and things like that. Well, we also said on that show you can't wait that long because sometimes those disturbances can pop up right off our coast. And sure enough, we had a disturbance show up right off the Georgia-Florida line not the band, the actual geographical location and started bringing rain to the East Coast and especially the eastern part of North Carolina. Again, another example of don't wait to get hurricane prep or storm prep, because those storms can pop up and literally be affecting you less than 24 hours after they come to life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we really needed that rain man. I was thanking the Lord because, you know, the grass, as far as I can see, is brown and yellow, and that's not the color grass is supposed to be it sounded like I was walking across a field of bacon, when I just go to my car every morning because my grass was so crunchy.
Speaker 1:Now some people say we had hurricane barrel and it was early, it temporarily reached the category five and people say, well, that's because of global warming and all that crap. I'm just not in a mood today. I hope you don't mind. I think for the most part that's all malarkey. It's just an excuse to scare people and get their money for that. But it does bring up the net zero by 2050 thing that you've probably heard a lot about, right?
Speaker 2:Oh for sure. Yeah, that's. That seems to be a common theme for political folks to put into play and, um, you know, they use it to get elected, they use it to get money, they use it to get elected, they use it to get money.
Speaker 1:And I just feel, I don't feel, I sense corruption all through it 100%, and so today's show we're going to focus on something that comes under the umbrella of the net zero 2050. But first let's let everybody know what the heck it is they're listening to, because if they're not regular listeners, they're quite confused. This is the Carolina Contractor Show. My name is Eric Smith. I do inside sales for Home Builder Supply and Wilson Cross for me, as we all know, lovely and talented Donnie Blanchard. He is a general contractor oh, don't be ashamed. He's also the owner of Sure Top Roofing and Blanchard Building Company, and we like to talk about your house, so that we kind of started talking about whether hurricanes can affect your house and we thought about these climate change and global warming and cooling and whatever's the flavor of the week. But there are things that people are genuinely interested about when it comes to these plans of reducing your carbon footprint. We'll get into the details of that. So we're going to focus on more of how you can do things to make your house net zero, not just the whole world, because in general, net zero for your house means a lower electricity or utility bill and we're all all for that. Go to the website before we get started, because there's going to be a quiz at the end of the show. Thecarolinacontractorcom. We've got links to the Facebook site, youtube site. We're putting the stuff up on YouTube so you can go there and follow. We'd appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You can ask Donnie a question. It's called Ask the Contractor. It's got a little button you click on. You got a question about your house. After today's show you probably will have questions about your house and things you can do to improve it and maybe save some money. Links to past shows you can download all the shows we've done over the past four or five years. We've got dozens and dozens of them and then you can stay in touch with us through social media IG, facebook that we mentioned before, of course, the big thing, the YouTube and you'll get a basic idea of what the show is on a week-to-week basis. But again, today we want to kind of talk about getting a net zero house, and is it possible? First of all, donnie, do you want to define what they call net zero?
Speaker 2:I would say the simplified definition is that if your house produces more energy than it consumes, and that is the way to achieve net zero in our world. And important point to make here is that when people focus on housing or electric cars to solve the problem of net zero, they're kind of barking up the wrong tree. We talked about this back in 2020, right after the election and I remember I made a point that stuck with me that the industrial sector so businesses and warehouses and just larger buildings are responsible for 60% of all the electricity consumed. So, targeting the residential market, I mean, it's a piece of the pie, but it's by far not close to the whole thing. And you know the cars, the houses and everybody's got to have a place to live and a way of transportation. But I think that they were going to aim the efforts at something in the bigger picture. They should probably focus on industrial more.
Speaker 2:But yeah, the definition is that you produce more than you consume and the way that works is if you have solar or wind. Basically, they can only produce when the wind is up or when the sun is out. I've got a house going now that has solar shingles and on a cloudy day, it produces zero, and so, even though it's daylight, it's really not producing anything. And I really think that the way that it works and the way to achieve that is that you have to have an adequate amount of solar or an adequate amount of windmills on your property that will produce more energy than your family consumes. And that's all related to the size of the house, the size of the family, how well the house is built, how well it's insulated and just a lot of factors to take into consideration.
Speaker 1:It's easy to say, it sounds wonderful, we wouldn't be against it and when I say we, I don't mean Donnie and I, or I mean the general population. But it's not easy to do and a lot of it can't happen. As a matter of fact, is net zero possible by 2050? No, is net zero possible at all? No, it's impossible to generate zero carbon emissions, which means you'd have to remove emissions and carbon from the atmosphere. You can't remove them all and you can't do enough of both to make it zero. So basically, it's a numbers game. You can toy with percentages, graphs, you can fit any narrative you want, but it's not going to work. But it sounds good and some people think oh well, I want to help the environment, I love nature, I love hugging a tree. I've gone all the way with a tree, I don't know. But the point being, it usually involves the government taking money out of our wallet. It's always going to be tied to money.
Speaker 1:Of course, cars are the big net zero example EVs, because of little or no emissions. But they require batteries and they need multiple elements to mine from the earth and they need electricity to charge those batteries. And most of that electricity right now is generated by gas turbines or coal or oil and all that stuff. But again, we're not going to focus a whole lot on the cars. Net zero is here and EVs fall under it. Yeah, making your house net zero is another branch of it that we want to fall under. So people wondering, hey, let's talk about EVs and stuff. That's part of the puzzle, but I bet most people didn't know. As you said, commercial buildings and businesses are the big energy eaters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. You know. I guess when I got out of college what 2003, four and I moved to an area I won't call it by name because we have a lot of loyal listeners there but that area was very well known for you know they were big advocates for Energy Star and LEED certification, the L-E-E-D that you don't hear anything about anymore, really, because the energy codes have changed, basically gotten so strict that when you build something to code now it just about qualifies for all the extras that you would have to do 20 years ago. But what I find and you know, you and I both live in smaller towns, but when you get towards the bigger towns where there's more money concentrated in those areas and the little town I guess it's still a little town but a lot of old money and what I'm seeing there is they seem to be the biggest advocates for this net zero push. And you know net zero is not cheap and no secret there that it costs a lot more money to build a net zero house. And those folks, you know the areas where there's a lot of old money or you know a lot of doctors concentrated in one area and you know just a lot more money circulating in those places. Those are the people who seem to be the biggest advocates because they can afford it. But when you get out to the suburbs, it's just not realistic. And I think that we threw the numbers around back in 2020 when we first addressed this that the cost of building was right around $200 a square foot. It was almost $400 a square foot to build a net zero house. That's a big jump. That's almost double to save on a power bill. So when you extrapolate that power bill over a 30 year mortgage, you know the payback just isn't there.
Speaker 2:Like you mentioned before, I'm all for it. I think it's a wonderful idea If you can build a house sensibly and not have a power bill. I think that's the goal in terms of you're not going to save the planet, but that's the goal to be independent, not be pulling on the electrical grid, and you're doing your part to be what do they say? Off the grid. That's the way that people word it. And being off the grid, even if you go solar, you have to put the extra investment in there for battery backup, because people think if you're tied into solar and you're back feeding into the electrical grid, that you'll never need any help from the electrical grid. But that's not true. So if things go down, you have to have that battery pack for storage and I want to say those batteries are seven grand a piece and the average house probably needs two or three of those.
Speaker 1:Have you ever heard of Elon Musk's solar farm idea?
Speaker 2:A little bit. I think you told me a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:Someone asked him you know, could you power the US just on solar power, on solar panels and stuff?
Speaker 1:And he said, yeah, 10,000 square miles covered in solar panels would be enough to power 100% of the US electric grid.
Speaker 1:And he gave an example like some vacant corner of New Mexico which, by the way, did you know there is a New Mexico, I was unaware Arizona, somewhere like that. Now that's not feasible to put it all in one spot, because one we pointed out to be someone takes it offline with 10 drones or something, but you'd have to build out connections to it throughout the whole US. Regardless, they ran the numbers and to just put in 10,000 square miles of solar panels would be $780 billion to $1 trillion, and that's not even counting running the system out, connecting it up, the price to update the whole electric grid of the United States. This will stun you when we get to that point, so stick around. But again, we're not focusing just on solar power for the whole US, but there's a lot of elements involved and you kind of found something that blew me away about getting all the elements needed for batteries and all this solar shields and the mining involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so assuming we said we can do this, we're going to be net zero by 2050. What would that require? And, of course, lots of solar, lots of wind, lots of EV, electric vehicles in place and for everybody to make the full conversion. If this had to happen, take the timeline away, just if this had to happen to support the population as we have it right now. You know, assuming that it doesn't grow and it's guaranteed to grow.
Speaker 2:So, basically, the guy who is the guru I read all his stuff and this guy is the kind of thing where, almost like with a good sermon, you got to listen to it twice to take it all in. You have to read his stuff twice to understand what he's saying and he is just great with this stuff, what he's saying. And he is just great with this stuff. But I'll try to simplify this. But he basically gave an example of a mine in Mexico, one single mine, where they mine silver, and this mine produces 10,000 tons of silver. He made the example that you would need at least 300 more mines like this just to meet the quota for silver alone. So let that sink in. You know, silver is not the only component we're going to need to improve the battery technology and all the microchips and everything that's going to be involved for what they need for, you know, wind, solar and electric vehicles. And you know he commented on the demand for other minerals like nickel, cobalt, graphite, copper, lithium all common things you see when you read up on batteries and lows even, and he said that would require thousands of new mining sites for each element. The demand would increase by 100 fold just to keep the supply chain going for electric vehicles only. So 100 fold for electric vehicles. And then think about what you're going to need for solar farms and wind power. I mean, basically, the demand for these mines would go up what 500 fold? And that's for each element and it's just not realistic.
Speaker 2:When he gave the examples, it was so far over my head for being able to understand it or just comprehend it I said, wow, this is definitely not doable. And he was doing all this to say that 2050 is not even close to a realistic target date to be net zero. And you know it's good to see when politicians make campaign promises to get elected and they stand on those promises. It's guys like this who pick them apart. But unfortunately, you know, the majority of the population aren't going to take the time to read up on this and see. Unfortunately, you know the majority of the population aren't going to take the time to read up on this and see.
Speaker 2:So I felt pretty strong about putting that out there today because you know it's it's just not realistic, he said. The last thing he said is, even if we found out that the earth had all the resources we needed to to pull this off and we don't even know if the tonnage is there for each thing to pull this off but if we found out that it were, that we don't have the capability to extract all that from the ground, and if, when you see large scale mining and the waste that's involved in all the mess that it makes to produce all this stuff and gosh, I can't imagine you know the labor that they, the way that they get the labor to produce all this stuff down in Mexico. You know a lot of a lot of inhumane things, a lot of nasty waste products as a result of this, and it's not a good thing. So you're producing these things to be net zero, but you're messing up a lot of stuff in the process.
Speaker 1:You're destroying the environment to save the environment? Yes, exactly. I think every electric vehicle, especially ones which is almost all that have lithium in them, some way should have the handprint of the child that mined it for them put on the side of the car so they can remember when they drive around their electric vehicle, so they can virtue signal, because electric cars don't have turn signals, they have virtue signals on them. Virtue signals oh, stop, dude, stop. That's so funny, so that's what they do. Well, they should have little handprints so they can know the little kids that mind it, so they could drive around going I'm saving the environment, I'm a good person. Screw you Really. I mean, you're doing it because you want to feel better about yourself, but you don't want to get your hands dirty. You can go to the soup kitchen and serve soup, or you can write a check and send it to the soup kitchen. Most of the people that write the check don't want to be around those filthy, homeless people, same people that want to buy electric cars so they can say they're helping the environment. I'm not sorry that I went on a soapbox there. Go, go for it, keep going. I got one more thing on that.
Speaker 1:I want to add that we don't have the infrastructure in place to power all these initiatives required to meet the goals 2050 or 2250 or 2500. There was a study that said if money as you pointed out money, materials and manpower weren't an issue, it still takes decades and decades to get the infrastructure in place, and on a previous show we talked about this a little bit in place, and on a previous show we talked about this a little bit. Bloomberg reported I think it was in 2023, that the cost to upgrade the US electric grid would be $14 to $20 trillion. Now nuclear power plants are the boogeyman and get a bad rap, but you could build enough nuclear power plants to power the United States 100% for $4 trillion, so for a fifth of the cost.
Speaker 1:Even though that's clean energy, the net zero people aren't really big. There's a faction of that group that's like. We don't like that, but anyways, we premised the Carolina Contractor Show today to focus on people who do want to reduce their energy consumption may emit or just part of the process of having a house. So let's I've calmed down, my pills are taking effect. Let's talk about building a net zero house and, donnie, this is going to be your wheelhouse. No pun intended.
Speaker 2:How do you go about building a net zero house or get close to it Kind of starts with the design phase, and when I say this I'm telling you how to do it. I'm not saying that it's realistic because, you know, not everybody, not many people, have the ability to buy a nice piece of land in the country where you can turn the house whichever way you want, put the house at the right place on the lot. And. But step one would be the orientation. You know, if you're going to have solar as your energy source, then ideally you would have a house where the ridge runs east to west. That means the front or the back of your house would be able I'm sorry, the front or the back roof slope of your house would be able to have that solar installed and get the best exposure to the best exposure to the to the sun facing the South. Another thing that's pretty important is a simple design. You know a cut up roof and and all the houses seem to want hips valleys and they're cut up like crazy, because the architect that sits behind the desk has never been on a roof, on a framing crew, and you know the framers curse the architects daily and uh, yeah, you know why in the world would he have this 3,000 square foot of roof area and two valleys that dump into an eight foot gutter on the front of the house. It just doesn't make sense. And dormers make framers curse Dormer, you can fly through the framing process and you get to the dormer and there's just as many cuts on the dormer as there are on just about half the house. And so, uh, when I drew my own blueprints, I always eliminated the dormers because they're leak prone. If you have a need for natural light on the upper floor, then I totally see the necessity of the dormer there. But don't make a skinny dormer. If you make a dormer for a one window, it's just a waste and they don't even look that good. But anyway, there's my soapbox Simple design, like I mentioned, boxy.
Speaker 2:You don't want a cut up roof line, you want, you know, lots of open space inside the house, and that makes better for less walls to insulate, so that cuts the cost of the framing and the construction down a little bit. Correct window orientation is a big thing. You don't want a lot of huge windows on the south facing elevation of the house, because that's where the majority of your heat transfer takes place. We talk about. Our walls are insulated almost to the tune of an R30. And so the way we build, with the two by six exterior wall and spray foam, spray foam insulation you've got an R30. And I know a lot of folks that that doesn't mean anything to you. The R stands for resistance to heat flow and a a window windows that you can get today. I think you can get up to an R5, but standard windows to meet energy code are right around an R3. So you're going R25 to R30, r30, r30, moving down that wall and you hit that window and you're at an R3. Important to note old windows don't even meet an R1. So if you have windows that are 20, 30 years old, you need to get those replaced because it's going to make a major impact on your utility bill.
Speaker 2:Moving on to the next thing I would say is get the correct thermal mass. So if you are trying to achieve holding heat, you know things like concrete floors. You can have the heated concrete floors and you can heat those with solar, and that's a big deal in the winter. Concrete countertops or just solid surface countertops are a big thing, but you know your thermal mass being in the right place and center point of the house. You know that they say that helps. I don't know if I'm sold on that, but that's one thing that the net zero folks say.
Speaker 2:I do agree with the next one and that's controlling your airflow. We talk about convective heat transfer. You think about a convection oven. It distributes the heat evenly around by moving the air. And we did a show a while back called Build Tight and Ventilate Right. And when you compare an older home that's airy and not very well insulated, you lose as much as 30% of your heating and cooling where they rate that right about 1%. Now with a house that's built right, ventilated right and insulated correctly, they achieve that.
Speaker 2:Now People say don't build it too tight. You don't want to do that. But when you have a fresh air intake in your HVAC system, it kind of remedies that point. So you're getting the fresh air circulation that you need and it's not built too tight so that it promotes mildew growth you know, mold growth or anything like that. So they figured that one out. Balanced insulation is another big thing where we live. Now I want to say that it's R19 in the floor, r15 is the minimum in the walls and R38 is what's required overhead. Overhead insulation is by far the most important thing, but to achieve net zero you pretty much need to forget about that and just go spray foam all the way, because spray foam is so far superior to everything else.
Speaker 2:The next one is probably the most important besides the insulation, and they go hand in hand. But that's your HVAC equipment. So you know, heat pump or geothermal, geothermal is a heat pump, a type of a heat pump. What heat pumps do? A heat pump is electric heat. They move heat from one thing to another. So it's much cheaper to move heat from one thing to another, like a heat pump does or geothermal unit will, than it is to make heat by burning a fossil fuel. So when you burn a fossil fuel, like natural gas or propane, it takes a lot more, it's more expensive and it takes a lot more effort on the unit to do that. So moving heat from one place to another, cheapest way to go and most efficient. Domestic hot water, meaning you make your own hot water. Solar water heaters I almost said solar hot water heater. I could feel you just about to jump on me, but people say it to me so it stays in my head and I'll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't believe that there's a hot water heater. But solar water heaters have gotten a lot better. You know they help, they're not bad, but you know water heaters. I'm a big fan of a tankless water heater, and that does. It does not require a fossil fuel, but the electric version of it requires you to have a second electrical panel and it pulls so hard on your electric bill that I don't recommend the tankless water heaters. But I am a fan of those, the gas version, propane or natural gas. It works so well and it's so efficient that you only heat the water up when you're using it. So it's actually cheaper, but, you know, not environmentally friendly, so I'll leave that right there. Uh, but solar water heaters are are okay, and there there's a version of a water heater that you can have with a geothermal unit and and that's just. You know, something that you rarely see, but definitely an option, I'd say.
Speaker 2:Moving down the list, those are the big ticket items associated with net zero. Uh, efficient appliances and lighting, since LED has been a thing. Yeah, leds everywhere, you can't beat that. You know, light bulbs last so much longer and they take so much less energy, so that's kind of. That's probably the one thing that's been implemented the most in houses right now. But I would say that appliances, you know they've come, they're taking care of themselves because they operate so much cheaper than they used to, so those things aren't something that you have to make a lot of effort to achieve. And then I guess the last thing would be the solar panels, because around here we're not in the Midwest with a lot of flat land Solar seems to be the most common way that people achieve to be off the grid. And so you know, we we talk about the solar shingles that we installed on the big lake house, that that's was under construction, and and solar shingles are the ticket. You know they're cheaper than a rack system. The degradation period is 25 years before they start to degrade, as opposed to the rack system, which is 10.
Speaker 2:So I think that GAF has figured everything out with the solar shingles, and I didn't. I didn't even want to put it out there until I saw how they worked. But the house that we put those on basically turned into a mini power plant and disclaimer. People think that well, I'm producing power and I'm going to sell it back to the power company, but Duke energy does not allow that at this point in time. I think, if enough people make a fuss about it, that you know that may be something that's that's realistic in the future.
Speaker 2:But, um, this house was producing anywhere from 80 to a hundred kilowatt hours. Uh, and this is after the time change, so this is a long day 80 to a hundred kilowatt hours a day, with the amount of of solar shingles that they had, and we had the heating and air running and the lights on and we were only consuming about 10. So when we power up the detached garage, the attached garage, with the mini split and you know I I guessed that they would pull about 30, but the important thing to note there is that if you're producing 80 to 100 a day, you're not producing anything at night, you're not producing anything on a cloudy day, so you lose all those days and when you do the math on the projections there it all basically comes out to they hit it just right and they'll never have a power bill.
Speaker 1:But they do have to be connected to the electric grid in case they run out of storage power for a long period. Say it's cloudy for five days and stuff right.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's exactly right. But the offset, the a hundred percent offset, is how they rate that. So even if it's cloudy for five days, they still make enough on the other days. That that most, I would say 11 out of 12 months they're they're guaranteed not to have a bill.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. We got to get somebody on from GAF to talk about that, because was it SureTop that did it or was it Blanchard Building that installed those solar panels?
Speaker 2:SureTop Roofing, you know separate from Blanchard Building. But I want to say that that solar install is pretty cool. I got pictures up on our SureTop, instagram and Facebook pages of that Facebook pages of that and I think we put a picture or two on the Carolina contractor but it was to date the largest solar shingle install in the Southeast, so pretty proud of that.
Speaker 1:Bravo to you, very well done. Hey, I wanted to jump back before we end the show to point one, which was orientation. You said the Ridge must run East to West to give that South facing slope. But you can't have that every house in a subdivision. Because I'm looking right now. I can see out my window where I'm recording from my house. My neighbor's house faces me, but the side of his house faces another house and across the street that house faces the opposite direction of him. So not everybody can have their house orientated correctly.
Speaker 2:That's definitely it. I want to say that the figure that I read was 80% of the houses are eliminated. Just from the orientation part of what we said it would take to make a house net zero. So would you say three out of four houses.
Speaker 1:As I look out, I would say, yeah, just randomly, 75% of the houses that I see right now are not oriented correctly. For step one yeah, so that would-. 80%. 75% Might be a good number. So look in your own subdivision I guess if, like you said, if you're building a house and you have some land, you can definitely orient it correctly, orient it correctly. But that first step is the hardest one for just anybody to implement if they want to kind of do some net zero work on their house, or even if they're building their house.
Speaker 2:Isn't it funny that people let the road dictate that? I mean, I guess if everybody went net zero, you'd drive down the road and there'd be all these houses catacornered to the road you're driving on and I don't know how I'd feel about that. I know what they're doing, I know what they're going for, but it still doesn't look right.
Speaker 1:It's just it's yeah, it's just not as easy to make net zero happen. And when you're building a house, there are 10 examples you gave. There are some other little things you can do, but just on that top 10 list you can't implement several of them just because of the physical position of your house. But there are things you can, and I think the solar shields. Here's why that is one of my favorite things and I know it was for you too. That is a great example of if you want to help the environment, if you want to lower your utility bill, if you want to feel good that you are doing something positive, that's a great example because it is so efficient. You don't even know it's solar panels on the roof unless you get up close to it and basically you're saying that house was generating 70% more power than it needed in the average day right it was.
Speaker 2:And the unfair part about that to the homeowner is that Duke Energy had no problem with him giving. He generated enough electricity to power all his neighbor's homes, so I would say the three neighbors closest to him. He covered their power bill. So Duke energy is raking in their money cause they're still charging them that for that and you know he still has a monthly service charge. I don't remember what it was, maybe $10 or something, but you know they owe him money and they've got it structured in a way where they don't pay people back for the extra or, you know, anything you produce over what you use.
Speaker 1:you know it's not set up to be net zero friendly to the homeowner, so you know we're still not there and I don't want to jump on Duke uh specifically, but let's face it, a lot of these corporations that pitch, hey, we want to be carbon neutral and we want to reduce our carbon footprint and all that crap. They're doing it for lip service and, again, for virtue signaling, because if they really were serious about it they would say, hey, if you put in these GAF solar shingles, we definitely want to buy that back. We want to help you out because we want to promote this, because we're all for green. At the end of the day, their job is to make money, not reduce the amount of people that want their product or service, and they're not going to back something they can't make a buck on. I'm a capitalist, I'm fine with that, but don't dress it up as though it's because we care about the environment and then jet off to somewhere and light cigars with $100 bills and eat Kobe steak all the time, pee down my back and say it's raining they definitely could take advantage of that homeowner and say, hey, let's run three lines to the three other houses and let them mooch off yours and great, we save the environment. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Sorry, exactly, I got back on my soapbox again. No, I like it. We'll get that top 10 list up there.
Speaker 1:Some ideas that you can do, especially if you're getting ready to build. It's always a good time to build. Don't let interest rates fool you. We'll probably see a cut, because Donnie predicted this months ago that before the election there'd probably be a rate cut on interest rates. And sure enough, this past week, the second week here of July, they talked about cutting interest rates before the end of the year. But if you're building a house, check out this list. Start thinking of things you could do in advance to make your house Again net zero. Don't worry about a timeframe. You just want to save money and have a house that's more energy efficient and keeps more green in your wallet and not into the government's hands on these silly initiatives that they try to push and then gaslight you If you don't agree with it.
Speaker 1:A website again the Carolina contractorcom. You get all the information about this show, past shows, right there and something you want to hear us talk about. Want to hear me ramble on something? Hey, just put a quarter in me, I'll take off. We do like your input. And check out the YouTube site. Please subscribe there and follow that as we start uploading more and more shows and snippets and information right there and again. If you've got a question about your house email Donnie, click on that Ask the Contractor button. Hope you enjoyed my soapbox. Hope you enjoyed Donnie's soapbox and all the information on today's show and we hope to see you again next week on the Carolina Contractor Show.
Speaker 2:Good show, my friend. Have a good day everybody.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Carolina contractor show. Visit the Carolina contractorcom.