Green homes - speedy sales in a slow market? | The Greenwash Brigade

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Green homes - speedy sales in a slow market?

For a year, I've been trying to convince Minnesota's affordable home builders concerned about a slowing market what Greg Pinn, a San Jose home-builder, already knows. "When a buyer has a choice between a home that isn't energy-efficient and...one that [is], the choice will be very easy."

In his Orchard Heights subdivision, seven of nine available green homes sold the first weekend they were available. He added that it only works when you're comparing apples to apples - homes that buyers can afford, with good layouts, in the right location.

While the marketability of green homes seems like a gimme this year, the details of the story raise several questions:

Can 3,600 square foot homes be green? I argue "no." Bigger homes take more energy to heat and cool, tend to house more continuously electricity-sipping gadgets, and lots more stuff. 3,600 is more like "huge."

Is Orchard Heights, the focus of this article, green? Who knows! There is no evidence that the homes achieve LEED standards. The marketing materials lack mention of LEED or any other verifiable benchmark, and the touted energy efficiency features (see page 10, PDF) list the super-basic: programmable setback thermostat, full weatherstripping on exterior doors, and code-mandated dual pane windows and water-saving shower heads. My Greenwash Alert is howling.

Does it matter if there are multiple green home programs in a single housing market? Within reason, it's fine. Different programs reach different home buyers. Nationally, LEED, with its relatively costly process, targets top performers. Green Communities has affordable housing covered. There's a gap in the middle which is either filled by local programs or still up for grabs. (The National Association of Home Builders is trying). All help educate the market and expand capacity for building green.

Do buyers have the choice to buy green? In most locations, no. There are individual green homes scattered about and a few green projects, but in my dense, popular, environmentally aware neighborhood, I can't find anything that meets both my location and sustainability expectations.

Why does solar installer Aaron Nitzkin of OCR Solar & Roofing predict the percent of a household's electricity their system will provide? Ok - so I asked this one as an excuse to share a really cool chart. Habits and choices make a big difference in how much electricity people use, so when Nitzkin says that the Orchard Heights systems will "meet 40 to 60 percent of a homeowner's electricity needs," he hides the importance of individual choices. Each bar in the chart on the left (data from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District) Janne graf_031208.jpg shows electricity usage in one of the 11 homes in a different subdivision. All of the homes are identical with the same photo voltaic arrays. The only difference is the occupants. As a result of how families live in these homes, some homes produce power and get checks from SMUD... and others pay $100 a month.

March 12, 2008 by Janne K. Flisrand
5 comments

tags: green building LEED real estate

Comments (5)

Allen | Respond
March 13, 2008 9:58 AM PT

"Can 3,600 square foot homes be green? I argue "no." Bigger homes take more energy to heat and cool, tend to house more continuously electricity-sipping gadgets, and lots more stuff. 3,600 is more like "huge."

---> I call bull. There are plenty of 3,600 sq ft homes that use less energy than homes half their size. Some of the physics involved is impacted by size. But a lot more has to do with building techniques. I'll put up a well built 4000 sq ft home any day against some 1800 sq footer quickly slapped together 50 years ago.

The homes Pinn talks about are a horrible choice to look at what consumers want. As he points out, the San Jose market in particular is hurting for houses in general. What we need is are some differeing home sin the same subdivision in a normal housing market like Dallas or Indianapolis.

Andrea Becker-Abbott | Respond
March 17, 2008 9:10 PM PT

What needs to be noted is that Greener is the key to Green. Only through a move of any size in the right direction, can we begin to make the slight shifts of perspective and behavior that will encourage the following of those who do not yet "get it".

Lets get loud enough about the tiny changes that do not intimidate. Once on the path, the way will soon be paved.

Janne K. Flisrand | Respond
March 18, 2008 7:19 AM PT

A coworker sent me another related article, this one from Newsweek, with the same basic message. The tag below the headline: Despite the free fall in housing prices nationwide, green homes are still red hot.

I'd respond to Allen, but I think the article does it better. Near the end, it tells the story of a couple who have considered location and size questions before starting their new house:

"Next month they'll break ground on 4,600-square-foot home in Colleyville, Texas. They hope to include loads of green technologies — perhaps even solar panels and a wind turbine — but they're still building a house that's nearly twice the size of the average newly built U.S. home. [bold added] They admit a smaller house would be greener..."

...but have excuses so they can feel OK about it. That's my point - smaller is greener, whether the house is old or new. (And, remember today's homes are already twice the size of homes 50 years ago.) Do older houses need energy upgrades? Heck yeah! Does that excuse massive mansions in sprawling subdivisions with "green" technologies calling themselves green? Nope.

Dennis | Respond
March 20, 2008 9:10 AM PT

Nice post, Janne!

The good point you bring up of aggressive efficiency in a huge house not necessarily being better than just having a smaller house again raises the need for LEED standards to put together a universal approach that can easily compare dwellings of various shapes and sizes. For instance, there could be a per capita environmental footprint that each home or building would have to live up to so an excessive sized house with great efficiency is not labeled better than a house that may not have the most state of the art windows but consumes the same amount of energy overall. Jim, do they incorporate this per capita analysis already?
I'm ecstatic that green homes are doing better than the rough norm in current US housing markets -- and I hope that continues to drive more builders to incorporate LEED into their default construction habits -- with the competition being who can hit LEED Platinum. Rising energy costs has made efficiency much cheaper than just a few years ago -- and if we can get more retrofits on current buildings and lower their energy consumption, that can prevent the demand for new coal and natural gas plants around the country. We'll see what we can do!

Jim Nicolow | Respond
March 24, 2008 6:27 AM PT

Change is incremental, and it is important to encourage steps in the right direction. A less-bad McMansion is certainly better than a conventional McMansion. Kudos to the developers for addings some better-than-conventional-practice improvements.

However, I share Janne's contention that celebrating a less-bad McMansion as "green" is indeed greenwash. The 50,000 'green' home of Bill Gates is the quintessential example. Even if it uses 1/4 the energy of a conventional 50,000 square foot home for two people (conventional 50,000 sf home!?!), it still consumes 5-times the energy of even a non-green 2,500 square foot home.

In discussing sustainability, "How much is enough" must be part of the discussion.

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of American Public Media or its employees. American Public Media is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers.

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