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Peter Cann is a man on a mission. He is striving to make his home as energy independent as possible, a status he calls net zero.

“I started my own business now that I’m approaching a net zero house that makes as much energy as it uses in a year,” said system engineer Peter Cann.

He uses extensive energy conservation which measures plus solar panels, a micro hydro turbine, geothermal unit and a windmill. The objective is to generate as much energy as one home uses in a year without using traditional fossil fuel.

“I believe in moving away from fossil fuels, using geothermal, which is the only thing that can get rid of the fossil fuel that I know of, and then moving to renewables to make the electricity the geothermal uses to heat and cool the house, along with all of the other electrical appliances in the house. And that’s how you get to a net zero house,” said Cann.

Cann became interested in harnessing the power of Mother Nature early on, especially geothermal energy, energy derived from the natural heat of the earth.

Cann said, “As a young engineer, I was a heat pump designer at Carrier and some of those heat pumps were air sourced, but most of them were water sourced for geothermal. So we were doing the first commercial resident geothermal units back in the late 70s into the early 80s. So that’s when I got my start with geothermal.”

This house has been heated and cooled with geothermal for over 35 years. It started with a prototype of one of the units I was working on. It’s been upgraded a couple of times over the years, but that’s really when I got into geothermal.

Cann expects to be completely at net zero sometime next year.