We know that true sustainability can be hard to quantify in green building. We could say we are building a sustainable home but we would rather show you

That is why the Santa Clara University Solar Decathlon Team is happy to introduce its sustainability meter, an innovative tool for determining our home's specific sustainability and calculating exactly how many tons of carbon dioxide we are saving in comparison to a traditional home. We will take a modern home of the exact size as the Ripple Home - let's call it our benchmark - and calculate its energy consumption using traditional (non-sustainable) appliances, insulation, building materials, windows, and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system. Next, we measure the real-time performance and compare it with the benchmark traditional home to determine our "true sustainability" in tons of carbon prevented from entering the earth's atmosphere.

We hope to show that by living in a sustainable home, you not only save money once with low energy bills, but that you save the planet and maybe even make a little something extra by selling your "carbon credits" on the open market.