During massive natural gas outages last week, homeowners in the Greater World Earthship Community outside of Taos, N.M., stayed warm using passive solar heating.

Businesses and schools throughout New Mexico shut down while residents stormed Wal-Marts and hardware stores in search of over-priced and sold-out electric space heaters on Thursday and Friday, according to news reports.

Some Schools and businesses are still shut down this week because of lingering outages, rolling electric blackouts, problems stemming from prolonged periods without heat, and bursting pipes, said Kirsten Jacobsen, spokeswoman for the Earthship Community.

“We were not affected by that at all,” she said. “If we hadn’t had anyone in town or if no one was watching the news, none of us would have had any idea it was happening.”

The Greater World Earthship Community consists of 60 homes built entirely from recycled or sustainable materials on 650 acres where up to 70 more homes can be built, Jacobsen said.

The community was constructed by Earthship Biotecture, a company with a global reach, building green homes around the world.

All of the houses in the community outside of Taos are completely off the grid with passive solar heating and cooling, rainwater collection and solar photovoltaic panels to provide electricity.

“None of our homes use electric heaters,” Jacobsen said. “It would be too much of a drain on the solar panels.”

She said some homes supplement their passive solar systems with wood-burning stoves, but most don’t need anything.

“It was -25 outside here last week and it was 65 degrees in our buildings,” she said.

The Earthship Community opened up to residents who were suffering in the cold because of the natural gas outages, Jacobsen said. No one took advantage of the offer to stay in the warm, naturally-heated, homes. In fact, few people filtered into shelters, according to news reports.

“It was a massive and kind of crazy thing,” Jacobsen said about the gas outages. “A lot of people are just really cold and staying in their spaces.”

The New Mexico legislature is expected to consult with the gas companies and hold hearings about the outages, according to news reports.

The gas companies have said the outages could be blamed on rolling blackouts and supply problems from Texas and that the companies needed to have requested cutbacks from low-priority users earlier, according to news reports.

Turning the gas on will be a long and involved process that could stretch well into this week, according to news reports.

“I think this little thing could be kind of a preview of what’s to come,” Jacobsen said. “It definitely made people realize and think about how dependent we are on this one resource.”

Image courtesy of Kirsten Jacobsen.