Somehow, celebs make pretty much everything seem cool. Heck, throw Leo and Cate into the mix, and suddenly even OCD and Katharine Hepburn are cool. Not to mention what these faces do for the green living image. But you don’t have to be rich or famous to live in a solar-paneled home.

The folks down under at the Queensland Institute of Technology are working on cheap, cost-effective solar panels containing titanium dioxide in a light-absorbing dye. The benefits are multi-fold: the panels can be used to heat and power a home and also to cool it off, reducing or eliminating the need for AC. As solar panels are improved upon, homes dependent upon them are becoming a more viable option and promising to be all the rage. After the initial cost of installation, the payoff in terms of money and energy saved is huge. Lucky for us, we don’t need to rake in a celebrity’s income in order to live like one.