Dive summary:

• People who sign up and pay up for a house tour that benefits the League of Women Voters will be getting different fare this year from the traditional courses of large new construction and stunning renovations of homes from Thoreau's days at Walden Pond.
• The theme for the spring tour this year is green building, and the stars of the show are energy efficiency and low carbon impact of seven houses in Carlisle and Thoreau's Concord.
• Environmental trends like green building and energy independence in the well-to-do western suburbs are not surprising – an unpublished survey in the 1980s found that it was the towns with the highest tax bases that were most likely to be accepting of conservation restrictions that reduced the taxable value of lands.

From the article:

"We were pretty sure we’d want to live in the house forever and would therefore be paying the house’s operating costs long-term, so it made sense to make sure the house was efficient,” Brian Foulds said. ...