© Parksy1964

Natural homes are becoming more and more popular for households to consider as a new way of living. Being eco-friendly, there are also benefits economically for households. Family households can expect to save more on their electricity bill than ever by simply adding more aspects found in natural homes. There are also many affordable choices to build your new eco home the natural way as well.

Blu Homes is a Massachusetts based startup that is taking a novel approach to building a green home. The company specializes in building prefab green houses which actually fold up in the factory for easy shipping. These are then unfolded at the construction site and can be bolted onto a foundation in a single day. The goal of the company is to mass produce their environmentally friendly designs like Toyota cranks out Priuses.

By doing so they hope to eliminate much of the hassle and cost associated with custom sustainable home building. While the idea of prefabricated and modular homes dates back to the advent of doublewides, these designs have become increasingly upscale over the years a top architectural firms saw that the market demand was high for beautiful and energy efficient prefabricated structures.

© rulhaf

Of course, I'm not saying that literally–though I love many hues of the color green! It's that I'm noticing that my perspective has really taken on a default setting, so to speak, of considering the eco-friendly aspects of things that I buy. This could be, for example, cleaning products, furnishings for my home, or fashion that I wear. When a coworker was looking for sleeper sofas from Fashion for Home, we started talking about the environmental impact of consumption and how we're looking to do even more than we are already doing. We want to consider the eco-friendly angle to just about everything we can. I've really shaped up the cleaning products I use in the house and my friend said she's looking for furnishings made of eco-friendly materials, like at fashionforhome.co.uk, and every where, as much as possible. These may seem like small things, but if you think of how many people there are, if most of us do our bit, that would really make for some change.

© UK in Israel

According to a recent report, the tide has turned against renewable energy projects. There are several reasons behind this shift which are interlinked, including the state of the global economy, government finances, difficulties in funding, and regulatory uncertainty. Prior to the financial crisis in 2008, renewable energy projects were being avidly pursued by governments across Europe, the US and China.

Wind farms and solar power grids, for example, were seen as 'green gold', especially in the face of the record high oil prices the world faced pre-crisis. But things changed very quickly as credit lines tightened and have remained that way for three years. There has been ongoing consolidation in the sector during this time through increased M&A. The crisis left many government balance sheets in bad shape, and this has led to reduced tax and regulatory incentives for the development of renewable energy projects.