Source: REMODELING Magazine
Publication date: 2001-11-01
| By REMODELING Magazine Staff |
By Rich Binsacca
As a homeowner, you may have read or heard about your state or municipal government requiring new buildings (if not necessarily homes) to meet higher environmental standards outlined by a government program, or perhaps endorsing the program of a professional association—representing, say, builders or architects—to achieve that end.
Regardless of what program you and your builder explore, all of them essentially have the same goals in mind: to improve the performance of buildings to be better stewards of natural resources and land, to make a less harmful impact on the environment, to extend usability through multiple generations, and to be more healthful to inhabitants.
Among the most popular national green-building programs for new homes, however, there are subtle differences in terms of their emphasis, evaluation process,and value to builders and homebuyers.
At the moment, there are three building programs popular enough to be called truly national in scope. They are the National Green Building Program by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB; www.nahbgreen.org); the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) for Homes by the U. S. Green Building Council (www.usgbc. org); and Energy Star (www.energystar. gov) by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)(1)
Here's a rundown of each program to help you gain better insight and make more informed decisions about whether you and your builder should follow one, all, or none of them for your new home. If none of these feels right for you, ask your builder about any outstanding regional programs or codes that may be better suited for your situation.
The NAHB's program, available to builders across the country, takes a holistic approach to green building and sets a high but attainable bar to achieve it.
To cover every practical base of green building, the program offers a "checklist" of categories from which builders (with input from homeowners) can select based on regional climate conditions, building materials, and local construction practices, as well as budget considerations.
The categories include the design and preparation of the building lot (land use issues and clearing practices); resource efficiency (the selection, use, and durability of building materials); energy efficiency; water efficiency; indoor environmental quality (healthy indoor air); and operation, maintenance and homeowner education.
The last category is particularly critical to optimize the efforts made to design and build a green home, and also includes some "lifestyle" training to help homebuyers understand the environmental impact of their living conditions and habits, such as recycling, energy consumption, and home maintenance. "Homeowners need to know how to operate and maintain the systems in their new house to optimize the efficiency of those systems," such as the heating and cooling equipment, says Kevin Morrow, green building standards manager at the NAHB in Washington, D.C.
Homes in this program are required to score a minimum number of points in each of six categories to achieve basic certification—which often far exceeds building-code minimum—and earn additional credits to gain higher ratings.(2) In addition to the minimum score for basic certification, the home must add 100 more points, which can be earned in any of the six categories. This degree of choice allows for the personal preferences, budget, expertise, and other considerations of the builder and his homeowners. "It's the most .exible system in that regard," says Morrow. "Builders and homebuyers can pick and choose which items they want and can afford to achieve final certification."
Following the guidelines and calculating points earned does not mean that you are required to gain formal certification; in fact, hundred of homes have been built using NAHB's free online "scoring tool" to calculate the effectiveness of their green building practices without following through to full program certification. Such homes may perform as well as tested and certified homes, but they cannot be called an NAHB Certified Green Building—proof to others in case of a sale that the home was checked by a third-party verifier and passed multiple inspections.
The current iteration of the National Green Building Program is still very new to the scene. As of the first of this year, only a few more than 100 homes were certified under the program since the program began in mid-2008.
The USGBC has carved out a near-monopoly on green building certification for non-residential buildings over the last half-decade and has now set its sights on housing with a variation of its LEED rating system. Like the NAHB program, LEED for Homes takes a comprehensive look at sustainability. It offers a similar mix of categories that cover land and materials use, water and energy efficiency, and indoor air quality, all intended to lessen the impact of the built world.
Among the subtle differences between the two programs is the slightly heavier emphasis that LEED for Homes places on prerequisites in each category; that is, regardless of location or budget, builders following the LEED for Homes program are required to take certain steps before they can begin earning any points toward certification, such as meeting minimum energy performance levels, recycling unused building materials, and lowering pollution caused during construction.
To critics of the program, the heavy dose of prerequisites makes LEED less flexible than other programs, specifically in terms of budget considerations. But proponents counter that LEED for Homes establishes a broader and sturdier foundation of sustainability upon which design professionals, builders, and homebuyers can build based on their preferences and budget. Besides, once the prerequisites are met, the project team and homeowner can choose what categories matter most to them and what's achievable in terms of availability and cost. "Getting past the prerequisites enables you to make choices because a baseline has already been established in each category," says Marie Coleman, communications coordinator for USGBC.
The USGBC and its proponents also consider it an advantage that the LEED for Homes program was borne out of a broad consensus of stakeholders compared to the housing industry-driven process that created the NAHB standards. "It's a very rigorous standard that continues to evolve through peer reviews," says Coleman. "If you are seeking to measure green building, we believe we offer the most robust program."
As with the NAHB program, following the program does not mean you have to attain certification; the full list of LEED for Home standards are available for download from the USGBC web site and a growing legion of regional "providers" are available to consult or simply advise professionals and consumers about the process. But remember, the field verification and testing required for certification are still the only way to prove that your home performs as well as you intended it to.
To gain LEED for Homes certification, the home must be registered with USGBC prior to groundbreaking and from that point undergo periodic and independent reviews and inspections—ideally by a LEED Accredited Professional (or LEED AP), for a fee.
The LEED for Homes program is well-known among builders and architects, and has caught on with consumers as well. As of January 2009, more than 1,300 homes were certified at one of the four LEED levels and 10 times that amount were in the process of being reviewed for certification.(3)
This federal initiative and consumer brand is by far the most recognized by homeowners. During its 25-year history, the program has qualified hundreds of thousands of consumer products—from refrigerators to DVD players, as well as new homes.
As its name suggests, the Energy Star program is focused primarily on energy efficiency, which is a critical component of green building—some say the most critical. More recently, Energy Star has evolved its program to include special sections for lighting and indoor air quality, and for blueprints for residential structures that are Designed to Earn the Energy Star designation.
Still, the Energy Star program does not provide a truly comprehensive approach to green or sustainable building. In fact, both the NAHB Green Building Program and LEED for Homes rely on Energy Star as a baseline for energy-related standards; in most cases, products and systems that are qualified under Energy Star are required to achieve minimum levels of energy efficiency under both of those programs—levels, in fact, that exceed the current national energy code and therefore place NAHB and LEED standards at a higher level from the get-go.(4)
That said, thousands of builders across the country have worked to qualify their homes under the Energy Star banner, and nearly a million new homes have met that standard since its inception in 1995—far more than either of the other two national programs. For Energy Star, a narrow focus and ease of attainability are the program's strongest suits. "The EPA recognizes that energy efficiency is just one of many attributes consumers consider when selecting products," says Sam Rashkin, national director of Energy Star for homes. "We feel, to be effective for mainstream buyers, a brand must be simple and clearly define a consumer benefit. As a result, EPA is committed to keeping Energy Star a binary decision for consumers: either it is, or it is not Energy Star."
Custom builders not only use the Energy Star label to help advertise their businesses, but as a springboard to a broader approach to sustainable building practices and performance. "It's a platform that every builder should use as a basic level of energy efficiency," says Texas custom builder Don Ferrier, who has built to all three of the programs discussed here, among others, in his career.
As with the other two programs, you can follow Energy Star guidelines and use qualified products to achieve a higher level of home energy efficiency without becoming certified by Energy Star.
To date, it typically costs more to build a home that meets any of these three standards than to build one that only meets minimum codes. Beyond the actual cost of some green materials, manufacturers and suppliers still charge a premium for their "green" products and systems, and trade contractors have not yet fully adjusted to slightly new ways to specify and install them, causing those professionals to charge more for their services.
In addition, there is a cost to gain certification, namely through multiple and periodic inspections by trained professionals (different from the building department inspector) and more intense documentation required to verify that the standards have been met and points earned to gain that status.
On the other hand, building green can put money back to the budget as well. By choosing higher-performance materials and methods, you may be able to scale down your HVAC system or water heater. Plus, there are energy savings you'll accumulate throughout the life of the home. Lastly, there are federal and local tax incentives that will off-set some of the cost of investing in a green home.
Furthermore, some programs allow some flexibility in how green a home you're committed to building—and how much you want to spend. NAHB and LEED, for instance, offer multiple levels of certification, from "Certified" to "Gold" levels, in part to accommodate cost considerations while still achieving a far higher level of performance and resource efficiency than conventional building methods. To push for a higher level of certification, then, becomes a choice, not a mandate.
And if even baseline certification is still out of your financial realm, most dedicated "green builders" have refined their floor plans, building methods, and supplier relationships to reduce the premium cost of sustainable housing significantly — perhaps even to nothing, as they have committed to providing high-performance housing as a standard instead of an upgrade.
Among housing industry professionals with a solid knowledge and understanding of green building, and experience with those practices, the LEED for Homes program is generally considered to be the most rigorous program, followed by the NAHB Green Building Program and Energy Star.
That being said, all set a much higher bar for housing performance than what the current building codes require; their differences, especially between LEED for Homes and NAHB's program, are subtle and mostly subjective.
For instance, all three programs recognize and reward the value of good housing design as a cornerstone of energy and resource efficiency. A floor plan and exterior elevations that require fewer resources to build, feature deep eaves and properly placed windows to provide natural shading, cooling, and daylighting to reduce the burden on mechanical systems, require less maintenance and replacement, and can be easily adapted to changing lifestyles are tenets for achieving sustainability.
To be sure, gaining certification under the NAHB, LEED for Homes, or Energy Star programs provides a certain assurance that your new home has been built to far more rigorous performance and resource-efficient standards than one built simply "to code." That assurance may not only provide you peace of mind and save money on your utility bills, but also give you an edge against comparable properties in the area when you decide to sell your home.
But the true benefits of green building, certified or not, run much deeper. The reduction of resources, from trees to water to fossil fuels, and of emissions from their harvest, processing, use, and disposal, are the far-reaching reasons to "go green" when building a new house.
The "built world," as it is called, is a primary user of energy and natural resources; homes in particular consume a vast amount of energy, water, land, and other finite assets that the Earth provides.
While the volume of existing, older homes currently far outnumbers those that have been and increasingly will be built to these standards, there will eventually come a tipping point where the built world overall has a smaller carbon footprint, reducing its negative role in global climate change.
Footnotes
1. The USGBC is a non-profit, membership-based organization focused solely on the advancement of sustainable building practices. The NAHB is a broad-based trade association comprising builders, remodelers, and those in the mortgage finance and building products industries. Energy Star is a federal labeling program designed to identify energy-efficient products for consumers. Started in 1992, it is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.
2. As of February 2009, the NAHB Green Building Program offers two ways to certification: The Model Green Home Building Guidelines (usually just called "the guidelines") and the new National Green Building Standard (NGBS). Under the guidelines, a home is certified at one of three levels, which corresponds to the home's cumulative performance point score: Bronze (222), Silver (406), and Gold (558). The NGBS includes an additional level, Emerald (697).
3. A LEED home is certified at one of four levels, which corresponds to the home's overall score: Certified (45-59 points), Silver (60-74), Gold (75-89), or Platinum (90-136). To simplify, the more green features and methods listed on the LEED checklist your builder incorporates into your home and construction practice, the more points your home earns.
4. An Energy Star rated home is intended to be 15% more energy efficient than a comparable home built to minimum residential building energy codes (IECC 2006). This 15% improvement corresponds to the energy-efficiency requirements of a Bronze-level home under the NAHB program and a Certified home under the LEED program.
© Copyright 2008, Hanley Wood, LLC. All Rights Reserved
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