Let's Save the World

I have an idea I want to share and to ask for your help in making a reality.

An idea that if made real will ensure that no one ever again, other than by war or natural disaster, anywhere in the world, will need to live without a roof over their heads, without heat, light, connection, and food in their bellies.

An idea that provides a pathway to our "nuclear free moment" on climate change.

The key to material and environmental security for all is to make our homes central to providing the energy by which we power our industry, our transport, and the general economy.

Simply put, I want our homes to power our roads.

Through solar energy our homes can become power stations, not just to provide for ourselves but to generate a surplus large enough that we can power our cars, trucks, trains, our businesses, our hospitals, schools, utilities and factories without any need for fossil fuels.

Should we do this our Power Bill's will become a Power Payment; our homes will always be warm, well-lit and healthy regardless of our incomes and our ability to make our mortgage payments will no longer be solely dependent upon our wealth or our ability to work.

If we build homes that generate 10 times more power than our household need and develop kit-sets that allow the homes we already have to be adapted to do the same then we will have the means to rapidly convert to an electric economy free of many of the pollutants causing our world harm.

We will have the means by which we can all act as individuals, families and communities to make a sustainable future in balance with our environment.

We will all have a means of helping to save our world.

Such a house does not yet exist but the scientific, engineering and production capabilities necessary to make it a reality do exist, just as the costs of renewable technologies, in both electricity generation and electric vehicles now makes viable the economics of such a great leap forward.

All that is needed is the vision, the planning and the political will to make it so.

My first goal is the establishment of an innovation prize offered to anyone in the world who will partner with New Zealand industry and New Zealand engineers and scientists in building a mass production kit-set home and kit-set retrofitting system for existing homes capable of such electrical generation at an affordable cost.

The Moa Prize, a $20 million cash prize to put the world's best minds on the problem with the winning designs put into immediate mass production in partnership with the NZ Government.

A prize so large and so ambitious in its intent that it will inspire the world.

We will deal with our current desperate shortage of affordable housing, eradicate the human costs of poverty brought on by cold damp houses and slash our greenhouse gas emissions far faster and far deeper than anyone would have thought possible.

We will train a new generation in skilled work in industries fit for the future and we will share in the intellectual property and manufacturing capacity necessary to export this solution to the rest of the world.

A world that like us knows we can do better and like us needs to do better.

Please do consider giving me a hand, all contributions gratefully received.