A BillionBricks home is the world’s first self-financing home, that combines housing and solar energy into a single investible financial solution. It presents an extraordinary opportunity to shape the future of the world, where everyone can be a homeowner while mitigating climate change. The benefits of this are exponential when these homes combine to form communities. Each home feeds all excess energy and water produced to the community where it might be utilised for communal services.

A BillionBricks community is a triple bottom line solution that combines clean energy and social housing into a single financially viable business proposition.The community produces surplus solar energy which is then sold through Power Purchase Agreements, providing an essential guarantee to raise financing for the project. In addition to homes, it offers an ecosystem of facilities for education, jobs, healthcare, and recreation. The goal of a BillionBricks community is to bring families out of poverty in a single generation and help them achieve lower-middle-income standards.

There are three main objectives to the BillionBricks home and these include circular design principles, aiding the public service system and carbon neutrality. A BillionBricks home is designed to be self-sufficient, off-grid allowing residents to reduce their dependence on public utilities and curb the effects of climate change. Designed to last 60 years, the sustainable homes operate passively, add essential active sustainable technologies to become off-grid and achieve an almost zero footprint and homeowners are encouraged to care for consuming fewer resources and to keep their home and its systems well-maintained.

A typical BillionBricks community of approximately 500 homes can reduce the demand for public services significantly and the excess renewable energy harvested by the communities would then be able to aid areas where local governments struggle to provide basic services.

A BillionBricks home can achieve carbon neutrality in six years beyond which it becomes a carbon-negative home. A community of 500 homes would on average reduce the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere by approximately 4,687 tons a year, which is equivalent to CO2 sequestered by 16.5 km2 of forest area per year.

Lighting: Schneider Electric

Photography: Sebastian Zachariah