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Voluntary Green Programs Counter Costly LEED Approach
The Home Builders Association of Greater Springfield, Mo., is the latest local association to take steps to launch a new green building program based on NAHB’s Model Green Home Building Guidelines.
Matt Belcher of Belcher Homes, a green builder based in Wildwood, Mo. and president of the Home Builders Association of St. Louis and Eastern Missouri, visited Springfield last week to discuss the success of his HBA’s own green building program, which is now two years old. The St. Louis green building program has certified 20 homes in the area, and 100 more are under construction — including a 28-home infill development within the city limits.
Since 2005, the Green Building Initiative has helped state and local HBAs launch 15 green building certification programs, with 10 more currently being developed. Additional programs — like Springfield’s — have been launched independently but are based on the Model Green Home Building Guidelines.
At the very least, even when they are not based on the NAHB guidelines, such green programs as the one being created by the HBA of Montana are voluntary, and that is providing an important alternative to green building mandates, said Ray Tonjes, a custom builder in Austin, Texas and chair of the NAHB Green Building Subcommittee.
“The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED-H certification program for single-family homes is still in pilot, but there seems to be some thoughts out there that it’s already a standard — and should be mandated,” Tonjes said. “The problem is that it’s too expensive and it’s not particularly intuitive. We cannot allow niche products like LEED-H to become the norm for green building programs. It would have a drastic effect on the price of housing, and I think that’s simply irresponsible.”
Instead, Tonjes said, green building approaches need to recognize the regional differences around the U.S. “Water conservation in Albuquerque means something different than water conservation in Albany. Solar panels don’t work in Washington State like they do in Waco. Only flexible, locally grown green building programs can adequately take local issues, architecture, weather and geographic differences into account.”
NAHB is working to take the guidelines through the American National Standards Institute’s development process. The goal is to offer local jurisdictions an “off-the-shelf” green building program that is consensus-based and truly green, but that remains flexible, he said. The process usually takes two years or more to complete, but the Green Building Subcommittee expects the standard to be fast-tracked because the guidelines were also developed using a consensus process.
Once the standard is established, local jurisdictions will be more inclined to look at the success of guidelines-based programs. “Green building is too dynamic to be put into a box or pinned to a wall. With a voluntary, market-driven program, it’s much easier to demonstrate that green building can be better building,” Tonjes said.
For more information, e-mail Calli Schmidt at NAHB, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132.
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