self-sustaining

comparative more self-sustaining · superlative most self-sustaining

1. Able to provide for one's own needs without help from others; self-sufficient.

   1 more example

   There was nothing odd, or futuristic, or exotically “eco” about the house — no solar panels to be seen, no giant arrays of thermopane windows passively drinking up light and heat; yet here, I’d been told, in the Sourland Mountains in New Jersey, an hour from Manhattan, was a house that had the potential — not long from now, not 20 years from now, but maybe within 5 to 10 years — to help turn millions of American homes into fully self-sustaining power plants, each one capable of producing hydrogen to fuel cars as well.

   2007 May 20, Mark Svenvold, “The Zero-Energy Solution”, in The New York Times

   1. Able to sustain itself without the need for additional fuel.
2. Opposing or rejecting exterior influence; independent.