I am setting off on a voyage of discovery around America, looking for the perfect place to live off-grid and the people to do it with. I have no plans to drop out of society, but I need somewhere I can be free.

Going off-grid is about much more than living a greener life. True, people who survive without mains power and water are likely to reduce their carbon footprint – especially if they use wind or solar for electrical energy, capture rainwater for washing and drinking, and dispose of their own organic waste-perhaps with a composting toilet.

Heat comes direct from the sun into the walls of your house, if it’s designed that way, and from a wood burning stove and/or solar thermal water heaters and/or ground source heat pumps which extract the heat from the ground and deliver it where it is needed.

That is a life based on renewable energy, and I estimate there are over 750,000 off-gridders at present, if you include those living in tepees, boats and vans as well as houses. I believe there is a huge pent-up demand to live this way, but its not for everyone. For me at least, the ecological implications are secondary. My reasons are about saving money and about freedom.

And since one reason for saving money is to be more free, the decision to go off-grid ends up just being about freedom – at least freedom from the need to pay the utilities and the mortgage. As long as you can afford the upfront payment for the equipment, you can live comfortably, making use of the latest technology, and without any of the hardships suffered by the original back-to-the-landers in the 1970s. I call it putting the free into freedom.

The technology has never been better – mobile phones and internet, ever-more-efficient solar panels and wind turbines, inverters and batteries; more mobile and low-power versions of appliances from fridges and TVs to computers and lighting systems. So why do I need to be free? Why do I need to spend part of my life off-grid?

Like many millions of Americans I have lost faith in the ability of the State to fulfill its basic functions. Despite the arrival of Barack Obama, who I respect, I cannot see how the State will be able to maintain its role of providing for the poor and dispossessed, preventing the strong from oppressing the weak, regulating the markets and moving towards a fairer society. The final straw was the triumph of the bankers (and insurers and hedge fund managers) in keeping their jobs – never mind continuing to pay themselves massive bonuses. Oh, and I am not an American. But I am talking here about a global trend, a global economy in danger, and a glocal (global-local) solution.

Over in Britain, where I come from, the breakdown of trust is even greater than in the U.S. The entire government and almost all the Members of Parliament now consist of incompetent and self-serving scumbags. It’s not me saying that. It is the verdict of the British people at recent regional elections, where a previously unelectable fascist party made major gains. The Labor Party has been in power 12 years, and has broken every reforming promise it made.

Legislators from every party have recently been caught stealing expenses money after a leak of all their financial records. The sums the MPs stole totaled only percent of the annual Merrill Lynch bonus pool — but it still stank to high heaven.

And meanwhile Merrill Lynch and the others keep paying themselves massive bonuses – with taxpayers’ money. For me the final straw is that there has not been the slightest attempt to force them to pay it all back. When I raise the possibility with accountants and lawyers I get back the instant response, “oh you can’t do that,” with no attempt to explore how it might be done. When I offered the idea as a TV documentary to UK Channel 5, their head of current affairs wrote back accusing me of attempting “revenge” on the city slickers.

I tried going off grid over here, but its almost impossible on this crowded and property-obsessed island the size of Kansas, with 60 million inhabitants. An acre of passable land here, with a few trees and no planning permission can cost $20,000. If you buy 20 acres you might get it down to $8,000 an acre but you will probably then have to find some land-buddies and divide the plot up informally.

Next comes the big issue, being allowed to live on the land which you bought. In most parts of the country, you would not get permission to so much as pull a trailer onto the land and live in it full-time. You have a choice:either do it in secret and risk getting caught, or lie say, “This building is not a house.It’s my woodland office, for managing the harvesting of the trees on my land. It has a bathroom so I can wash up during tree-cutting season.”

Living on what was previously agricultural or any other sort of land other than residential is what planners call a change of use. Residential land prices are kept artificially high by severely restricting change of use – and there are some good reasons for that.

We don’t want just anybody building whatever they want simply because they own the land. But the law is too strict, and it means that in this country of high house prices, where most 30-year-olds need help from their parents to put down a deposit on their first home, it is well-nigh impossible to find a homestead and get a house built for an affordable price.

I published a book two years ago about living off-grid in the UK called How to Live Off-Grid. (The second edition, published by Bantam, available from off-grid.net) After it was released, I tried to lobby the government to bring in a new kind of planning permission – one which would allow off-grid homes to be built in both rural and urban areas on land not previously zoned for residential, but on one condition – that they remain forever off-grid.

I spoke to Members of Parliament from all the main parties. I spoke to civil servants and wrote to successive members of the Administration (they reshuffle Housing and Environment Ministers about once a year). None would support my idea or even discuss it. I was invited to many seminars where Ministers were speaking and became quite accustomed to the sight of civil servants hurrying their Minister away as I walked up to speak to them. That is ridiculous – particularly as in Britain future electricity demand is predicted to exceed supply by about 25% (and 30% across Europe). So where is the extra power going to come from?

The same questions need to be asked in the U.S., where the solar panel industry is still partying from the announcement last year of huge subsidies for grid-tied solar power. Vast new solar farms and wind farms are planned, with huge new towers to carry the power to the population centers. But most households that install renewable energy get a pretty poor deal from the local utility company. They are allowed to feed back their surplus power into the grid, but they are only paid up to the point where they zero out their own bill. Any excess is gratis,the household’s contribution to the utility company shareholders’ dividend. And of off-grid power there is little mention – even though it is what many want.

I receive dozens of emails and phone calls each week from people who want to live off-grid. Some are individuals just starting out; others have joined into groups and decided to pool their money to buy some land. Many off-gridders and wannabe off-gridders are anti-capitalist in their outlook, but the large majority are not anti-anything – they are pro-market, pro-environment, pro-freedom and just want to live a decent life, free of debt, free of utility bills, growing some of their own food and making a living according to whatever skills they have.

My own skills transfer well to an off-grid life. I make my living from my portable laptop computer and cell phone. Each day I write up my blogs and work on my articles. I can make a living anywhere without back-breaking agricultural labor.

But my native country has shown itself inhospitable to my chosen lifestyle, so as I am setting out to find my homestead in the new world.

So what am I looking for?

My first quest is for people – a community of like-minded people who care about our society, and who want to make a difference. I am not looking to join a commune or co-operative – I don’t want to cut myself off from society to that extent. I am not interested in communal dining, cleaning rotas, interminable meetings, the need to reach a consensus.

I am interested in a social community that has turned away from the shameful over-consumption of the past 50 years, the pointless acquisitiveness, the hopeless materialism and the obsession with show-business trivia. I want neighbors who solve their issues themselves instead of calling the police or county commissioners about every little problem, but who resolve them from within the present set of laws and culture that makes up the American way of life.

My second quest is for land – low-cost, mixed use land, urban or rural, where I can live well, generate power, plant trees and grow food, without getting heavily into debt.

Some states are as restricted as Britain – and surprise, surprise, it
is the places where land is most expensive that have the tightest laws. The depopulation of rural America has left a countryside where fast roads speed us through a near-empty landscape and horses outnumber people in some of the lushest and most liveable areas. True, there are also huge swathes of America, albeit the less desirable parts, where land is still dirt cheap and building codes are nonexistent. But that is because few people actually want to live there.

So as I travel I shall also try to recruit supporters to a new movement, aimed at off-grid land reform – making it easier to homestead on woodland and agricultural land (and even industrial land). There are five public policy reasons why I think the Obama Administration will respond positively to the arguments:

Energy security: In the event of disruption of energy supplies, whether oil, coal, nuclear or a natural disaster, a sizeable off-grid population would increase the resilience of society as a whole.

Rural skills and repopulation: A positive policy towards off-grid
living would bring hundreds of thousands back to the land, reviving
dying communities and old skills.
Environment: It s a cleaner, greener lifestyle.
End of consumerism As we move into the post-consumer society, where many have realized that possessions do not bring happiness, living off-grid is the natural lifestyle choice.
Survivalism: For those who predict the breakdown of society for whatever reason, living off-grid is a sensible precaution.

There are two criticisms that are often leveled against off-grid living. Environmentalists are not really sure how to approach off-grid. It’s a minority thing – not on their radar, but they don’t really like it. They say that it’s bad for the environment, that it relies on batteries which are allegedly dirty because they are made from lead and contain sulphuric acid, but the standard lead-acid battery is fully recyclable. Lithium Ion batteries on the other hand have a higher carbon footprint in their maintenance profile.

Environmentalists say they would prefer to use the grid as their battery, conveniently forgetting the huge embodied costs of both solar panels and the grid, the continuing build-out costs anticipated for the so-called smart grid, and the wasted power in both production and transmission of energy.

I would worry more about what environmentalists thought if it was not for the fact that many of them live such unethical and carbon intensive lives.

The most common criticism of off-grid living is that its a kind of selfishness, battening down of the hatches and withdrawing from society. Well, it can be,but that is not the way I plan to practice it. I will be part of an off-grid community, not a hermit,and want to live in an off-grid world, not a one-off village in the boonies. Of those that contact me, most who live off-grid or want to live off-grid feel the same way.

Everybody’s different and others will have their own reasons for losing faith; other breaking points or dissatisfactions or ambitions that led them to reduce their dependence on ‘”the system.” For m its about stepping off the treadmill without dropping out of the race.

Nick Rosen is an award winning documentary maker, author and broadcaster. As well as several books, he has written for the Times, Guardian, Washington Post and Reuters, and produced documentaries for CBS 60 Minutes and PBS Frontline. He wants to launch an off-grid Energy Company. He can be reached at nick@off-grid.net.

Copyright Nick Rosen 2009 – Not for syndication