Pricing has always been a problem. When you talk to Europeans, they tell you about all the things they're doing in their countries. We've actually had some Europeans come across and say, “Just be careful about the context, because in Europe the price for power and energy is very high.” So there's a natural driver there for them to go to much more efficient construction practices than here. Until now we haven't had that driver. Now we're looking at addressing the issue of climate change through things like energy efficiency, so we have a different driver.
How do we communicate that to the buying public as the reason to buy net-zero energy homes? We're talking about market transformation. We're asking people to invest considerably more money in their homes, and we have to help them understand why it's required. Just the energy savings isn't enough of an argument at this point.
When we're asked how that money should be invested, if I knew exactly where prices were going to go I'd be investing heavily in the market right now--but I don't. We can see that energy costs are going to continue to rise, and there will be more of a demand for these types of homes.
We're talking here about how to accelerate that kind of deployment into the marketplace so those homes are available for the homeowner when the energy prices continue to rise. The technology is there, the builders understand how to build them, and the trades know how to construct them. The system is in place for it to become a market-driven deployment on a mass scale, but we need those incentives at the front end to get that mass deployment going.