Among the many great reasons to attend the National Green Building Conference & Expo May 1-3 in Salt Lake City — networking opportunities, the latest in green technology, the tour of green homes and developments — one of the best is education.

The conference’s educational sessions will help attendees learn more on just about every aspect of green building, including how to make green cost-effective and how to sell green to home buyers.

“We’ve got educational offerings for builders, remodelers, developers, marketing professionals, even the lawyers and the tax guys,” said Kevin Morrow, NAHB’s senior program manager for green building.

“This year we have emphasized making the value connection in the marketing, but we also have a number of excellent educational programs on the technical aspects of green building and energy efficiency,” he said.

The educational opportunities at the show are geared to meeting the needs of relative newcomers and experienced green building professionals alike.

A short sample of this year’s educational offerings includes:

• “Super Green Building: Building an Emerald Level Green Home.” The Emerald certification level is the highest that a builder can achieve under the National Green Building Standard.
  
  Homes that score Emerald are very high performance and typically will include alternative technologies such as solar or geothermal to meet the standard's stringent environmental performance criteria.
  
  Emerald-achieving builders will discuss the lessons they learned from building such high-performance buildings so that builders can apply them to their own projects.
  
  
• “The Right Words Matter: What Do Consumers Really Think About Green Building?” Using the right words is crucial when marketing green homes and home improvement products to consumers.
  
  In 2010, the top reason to buy greener home improvement products was "to save money" (17%) and the bottom reason was "to be more comfortable," according to the Shelton Group.
  
  In addition to data and statistics, this presentation will provide video clips from focus groups and related results from Shelton's four annual proprietary consumer studies.
  
  
• “Energy Qualified Homes: Version 3 Technical Review and Progam Update.” In response to increasingly rigorous codes and standards and improved construction practices, the Environmental Protection Agency has released a third-generation of “Energy Star for New Homes” guidelines that will go into effect this year and next.
  
  This presentation will update the audience on the changes to the program — including the rationale behind them; the value they will provide; training requirements for builders, HERS raters and HVAC contractors; and more.
  
  
• “High-Performance Renovations.” Two builders will discuss how they renovated two older homes with antiquated systems in very different ways and achieved high performance while keeping their projects affordable.
  
  
• “Connecting Home Owners With Their Homes.” This session reviews the education and documentation that green builders should provide to enable their customers to understand green features, troubleshoot many common problems and operate and maintain their homes for peak performance.
  
  
• “High-Performance Homes at an Affordable Price.” A look at how new systems and construction processes can provide high-performance in terms of health, sustainability and energy efficiency at reduced building costs.
  
  
• “How to Develop a Green Building Product.” Chris Nelson, director of global commercial development for UL Environment, will review the new industry-wide sustainability standards developed for green designers and manufacturers of sustainable building products and materials.

For a complete listing of the educational offerings at this year’s conference, click here.

All of the details on attending the conference are available at www.nahb.org/greenbuildingconference.