Sustainable Living in Luxury at Aura at Camelback

Just outside Phoenix, a new sustainable luxury living community, Aura at Camelback , is being built by Catalyst Communities, a company who develops properties with the environment in mind. The 36 unit community will feature a program that will provide residents with electricity with a little help from renewable energy and energy efficient technologies.

Free electricity? How is that possible or profitable? Catalyst is hoping to make it quite possible and highly cost effective through the institution of eco-friendly policies which will allow for such a benefit for the residents of the community.

Aura has attained LEED Silver certification, which signifies the steps that have been taken in multiple categories to improve resource efficiency, waste reduction and sustainability. Aura has also managed to innovate in some other areas as required by the LEED Silver certification.

Each home will have a rooftop solar photovoltaic system allowing for harvesting of renewable energy. The photovoltaic system has the ability to produce all the energy needs of the home allowing for a no cost electricity bill. The community also hopes to attract like minded people who all share a common goal of using our resources carefully thereby reducing consumption of electricity. Catalyst Communities has even managed to make a guarantee, stating it will pay for the electricity consumption not produced or provided by the photovoltaic systems for the first five years.

Each home will range from 2,469 to 3,147 square feet. The price range for the community is $900,000 to $1.3 million per home.

The cost of these homes are somewhat high and may be out of reach of most home buyers, especially during the housing crisis faced by the United States at the present time. But, it is a start. Even though only a privileged few may be able to afford the homes, the development may set a positive working example for new communities that are being designed. With LEED costs coming down and bearing only a minimum construction premium as compared to traditional building systems, increased LEED certification should start slowly working its way into more and more developments.

While the Aura at Camelback development is still not where our nation should be during a period when resources are rapidly dwindling, the unnecessarily large size of the homes being just one glaring fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of true sustainability,  it is at least a start.

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