Gary Marbut and Energy Conservation - Facts

Gary studied residential energy conservation principles while living for a decade in Fairbanks, Alaska, in a climate where residential energy conservation is at a premium.

When Gary returned to Montana in 1979, he designed and built a home that was then and remains still a model of residential energy conservation.  This home was ahead of its time then, and is so today.  Gary built his model home to be super-insulated, partly earth-sheltered, passive solar, active solar, high thermal mass, tightly sealed with controlled ventilation, super-efficient shape, and with unique integration of energy conservation features and principles.  This home uses ground-source cooling in the summer to keep it cool at virtually no cost.  When new, this home was featured in the Missoulian as a model of energy conservation.  Backup heat for this home is electric, metered separately for monitoring purposes.  This 2,400 square foot home still remains ahead of its time, with an annual consumption of electricity for heat of less than $10 per year.

During the 1980s, Gary consulted for residential energy conservation, helping many homeowners make wise choices about what expenditures in energy conservation would pay acceptable returns on the investment.

In the mid-1980s, Gary was appointed by Governor Ted Schwinden to the Governor's Advisory Council for Energy Conservation.  During this period, Gary devised recommended energy conservation standards for new residential construction, most of which were adopted by the Northwest Power Planning Council for implementation within the distribution area of the Bonneville Power Administration.

In the mid-1980s, Gary wrote and developed software to analyze the multitude of features for any structure that play into the long-term energy consumption cost effectiveness for that structure, software intended primarily to model planned new residential construction.  Gary's software was approved by the federal Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae lending underwriters to qualify new construction properly modeled and designed for increased loans to pay for proven energy conservation features, design and materials.  Gary eventually sold this software into the architectural industry.  The methodology and mathematics in this software became the backbone for future evolution in residential energy modeling software.

During the 1990s, Gary developed a template for using over-the-road woody biomass converters to convert forest cleanup residue into green electricity and deliver that green power to market using the existing power grid.  This process could generate gigawatts of indefinitely renewable power annually, clean up fire-prone forests, put forest products people to work, and stimulate the economy, all with zero carbon footprint and pollution.

For nearly twenty years, Gary has paid extra on his electrical bill every month to purchase electricity generated by green, renewable sources.