ong before the energy price shock of 2000, even before the oil embargo of the 1970s, Arnie Katz was committed to energy efficiency. He stuck with it through the profligate years of the 1990s, when energy prices bottomed out and people bought gas-guzzling SUVs and mega-mansions without a care for the political or environmental repercussions. He shrugs his shoulders at the latest renewal in energy awareness, spawned by the September 11 terrorist attacks and the realization that as long as we are dependent on the Middle East for oil, we will be intertwined with the oft-despised political leadership of those countries. "To me, energy efficiency has always made common sense," he says. "Why would you want to do anything else?"

Katz '68 is director of the Healthy Buildings Resource Center, a program of the Advanced Energy Corporation, a Raleigh-based nonprofit focusing on energy efficiency in buildings and industrial processes. Katz's expertise lies in how to get the latest knowledge about healthy, energy-efficient design incorporated into the building community. The designs he promotes are not sexy--no solar collectors or wind generators, although those could be part of the package. The genius is in the details of home construction and in the process that ensures that they are followed. Katz and his colleagues are so convinced of their system that they are willing to guarantee the energy bills of any home that uses it--bills as low as $18 a month for some three-bedroom houses.

That guarantee, and the modest price they offer it for, has brought utility companies and home builders from all over the country banging on their door. And it has attracted a host of other Duke alumni to join his crusade.

On Energy Watch in Washington

Nationwide, residential and commercial buildings consume more than one-third of total U.S. energy, at an annual cost of $240 billion. Buildings contribute one-third of our urban air pollution and roughly one-third of carbon emissions. Unless conservation measures are taken or greater efficiencies achieved, energy consumption will grow proportionately with our population. That's reason enough to take up the conservation banner. But for Katz, the motivation goes deeper than the numbers.

He traces his energy awareness back to his childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Widowed with six children during the Great Depression and living with the family, Katz's grandmother used to follow him around the house turning off lights. In the late Fifties, the family lost their retail clothing business when the local steel mill shut down. Katz says that far from being traumatic, the experience taught him that even a drastic reduction in income and in the ability to accumulate "stuff" had little effect on his happiness or well-being. The seeds of a lifestyle based on frugality and independence from material possessions were sown.

As an undergraduate at Duke in the late Sixties, Katz was an eager participant in the back-to-the-land movement that had many students living in former tobacco barns, renovating old farmhouses, and building crude housing. Together with several other students, he attempted to build a log cabin from scratch on land owned by the family of Bill Boyarsky '69, along New Hope Creek near Duke Forest.

"We spent a whole day chopping down one oak tree before giving up on the idea," Katz says. "We were totally clueless."

After graduation, Katz joined the National Teacher Corps in the western North Carolina mountains. There he discovered that he loved to teach, but didn't like schools. After several years in Florida and Virginia, he and his wife, Svea Oster '68, moved back to Durham, where he joined with Steve Hoffius '71 to edit and publish Carologue, a cross between The Whole Earth Catalogue and Mother Earth News.

Still harboring the fantasy of building his own house, Katz decided to learn some building skills. He went to work for Kelly Morris '68, framing houses in Durham and Chapel Hill. Later, he took a job with Durham homebuilder Richard Harkrader, whose contemporary solar homes and apartments dot the neighborhoods around West Campus. Katz was sold on Harkrader's energy-efficient designs and planned to build one for himself "someday."

In 1979, Katz and his wife bought into a land cooperative called Lockridge Community, bordering Duke Forest. They had hoped to build a modest house in which to raise their then-one-year-old son Sol Katz '00, but money was short. They bought a used mobile home instead and moved it onto the land. The trailer lacked central heat, air- conditioning, and even running water. "The family joke was that Sol was housebroken before he was toilet-trained," Katz says.

In the coming years, Katz organized numerous tours of solar homes in Lockridge and the surrounding area. Solar energy was the rage of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and homes popped up all over the Triangle area sporting roof-mounted solar collectors and large, south-facing windows. Builders gave a nod to energy efficiency by adding extra insulation to the walls and floors, but the focus was always on the solar aspects.

In 1984, Katz joined the North Carolina Alternative Energy Corporation, a private, nonprofit company set up by the state to research and promote alternatives to conventionally generated electricity. At the time of the AEC's creation in 1980, electricity prices were soaring and citizens were protesting the economical, environmental, and safety concerns around nuclear power. The AEC's mission was to reduce the reliance on this form of power and, in most people's minds, this would be accomplished by blanketing the state with solar, wind, and hydroelectric generators.