RELEASED: September 17, 2009

By Leigh Ivey

DANVILLE, KY—Centre College professor Dr. David Anderson doesn't just write about living a green lifestyle—he lives one.

Anderson, Paul G. Blazer Professor of Economics, has often received media coverage for his research and writing about the economics of law, crime and the environment. And recently, Danville's Advocate Messenger featured a front-page story about his energy-efficient house, complete with solar panels, a geothermal heating and cooling system, a compost bin and a rain barrel.

"It produces a good feeling to know that we're getting a lot of clean energy though our efforts to live a greener lifestyle," Anderson says. "It's nice to know we're not using as much dirty energy from coal and are instead using pure, clean solar energy." 

The installation of an eight-panel solar array on the roof allows Anderson's house to use net metering; his energy meter runs backwards whenever the house is using less electricity than is being generated by the panels.

Anderson is the first in the Inter-County Energy's 5,000-square-mile coverage area to use net metering, a fact that surprised him.

"Hopefully this it the beginning of a new trend," he says. "There's no reason why every house can't use solar panels for energy."

Anderson has shared his message about the need for energy conservation before. In 2008, his book Treading Lightly: The Joy of Conservation, Moderation, and the Simple Life was published. In it, Anderson describes the lessons of conservation he learned from his parents and his own experiences.

As he continues to transition to an even greener lifestyle, Anderson is discovering that the pleasure of using clean energy isn't the only benefit.

"With both our hybrid car and the new solar panels, we've been surprised that the money we've saved on gas and energy has been even more than we'd imagined," he says. "The estimates the media gives on money savings through these measures are actually quite conservative. We've seen savings of much higher than the estimates we'd seen."

To read the Advocate Messenger article about Anderson's environmentally friendly home, click here.

Have comments, suggestions, or story ideas? E-mail leigh.ivey@centre.edu with your feedback.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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