The world of green building continues to get more competitive — and while it’s still admirable to build housing with top-notch insulation and solar panels, it’s no longer cutting-edge.

Closer to the edge might be the upcoming Geos Neighborhood, a 250-home housing project to be built in Arvada. Geos homes will have airtight construction and photovoltaic (PV) panels, but the design also includes geothermal systems, heat recovery ventilators, “checkerboard” building placement to maximize solar exposure, and water conservation features.

Norbert Klebl, a Boulder engineer and the Geos master developer, said Wednesday that the project will be unique, partially because it will demonstrate that it’s possible to build net-zero-energy homes in “all kinds” of configurations.

Net-zero-energy basically means that a home will have zero net energy consumption over the course of a year, partially because the home will produce sufficient energy through solar, wind or geothermal systems.

“We didn’t just take a bunch of free-standing single-family homes and say our concept works for a single-family home,” said Klebl. “We will have duplexes, townhouses and apartment buildings, and we will show that the concept of total sustainability, or net-zero-energy performance, can be achieved in Colorado with any building type.”

For starters, PV panels will be on every Geos building. Klebl said the neighborhood will still be on the “conventional” electrical grid because the PV can only produce electricity for parts of the day, but Geos literature says the PV arrays will also be able to release excess electricity back to the grid when it produces more juice than needed.

Next, Geos will be using its geothermal systems for domestic hot water. Klebl said geothermal is currently an underutilized resource in the region, but he also said solar thermal could have been a viable alternative for Geos if it had the room.

“We need all the south-facing roof space for producing electricity, and we don’t have extra roof space for solar thermal panels,” said Klebl.

He also said the geothermal system will serve as an efficiency improvement tool for electric power. For example, Klebl said one kilowatt-hour of electricity can increase the temperature of a 20 or 40-gallon tank by perhaps five degrees.

“But if you use the same kilowatt-hour and first propel a heat pump, which draws energy out of the ground, you can raise it by 15 degrees,” said Klebl.

The Geos project also will not use natural gas, commonly used for heating or cooking, at all. Klebl said he is a petroleum engineer by training, so he follows news about worldwide oil and gas resources. He said he is “100 percent convinced” (there is debate, however) that the world has passed “peak oil,” or a point at which worldwide oil production capacity will only decline, and he said “peak gas” might lag peak oil by 10 years or so.

“So, I think anyone who’s building homes right now has to go without natural gas, and we want to demonstrate that it’s already economical to do so,” said Klebl.

But Klebl noted that it will still be up to the individual homeowner to accomplish net-zero-energy. “It’s a question of lifestyle and attention to energy efficiency,” said Klebl. “We assume that not every home will be net-zero because the lifestyle of the family or the individual that lives there might not follow all the possibilities.”

Contact Richard Valenty about this story at (303) 443-6272 ext. 126 or valenty@coloradodaily.com.