Builders Launch Roll-Your-Own Green Certification
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.19.08
It is official; The National Association of Home Builders have launched their own green building certification system. We griped earlier about it here, suggesting that it was LEED lite and would confuse the public; let's be more positive this time and look at the finished product.
Starting off, it is really LEED ultra-lite; a builder rates his house on the online scoresheet. It is a straightforward system and I can see it being very useful at the design stages, as it is written in comprehensible language that does not need a trained professional to interpret up front. While I wish all houses were designed by architects with LEED credentials they are not, and I might as well face the fact that getting more people building green is better than being pedantic and perhaps elitist. That line in the picture at the top says it all- builders are going to do it their way, so at least get them pointing in the right direction.
After the builder fills out the form he works with a Verifier, who is accredited by the NAHB. Standards are not quite up to LEED accreditation (one year building experience or a 12 hour course) but there is testing and continuing education. The verifier visits the site at least twice to review progress and check documentation. The final report is sent to the NAHB for certification.
So it is hard to call it an open third-party verification, since the builders wrote the document, choose the verifiers, and issue the certification. However it is also cheap and easy and accessible, and if builders use it , will they build better, greener houses? Lets look at one category covering house size, a particular interest of ours.
Instead of just going after the issue of size, they go after efficiency of the plan; a five bedroom house gets a lot more points for being small than it does for being big. Expect to see a lot more five bedroom houses around, but in general points for efficiency is good.
And they do cover all of the categories.
As an architect, I think LEED is a great program and wish every builder would use it. As a recovering real estate developer who knows a lot of homebuilders, I know they are not going to spend the time or money on it. While I don't usually like labels without third party verification that are industry written and managed, if the builders, purchasers and municipalities buy into this, we will have better, greener housing. ::NAHB Green Building Program see also Living Home's Steve Glenn debate builder Michael Chander at ::Housingzone.
One of the big gripes people have with LEED is the cost to get a building certified. It's negligable for huge projects, but for private homes it's too much. Often times, buildings that would pass the LEED credentials, don't get it because of the cost. All in all, having a LEED plaque is really just a bunch of snobbery. One could build a "LEED" building and instead of wasting the money on getting it certified, use the money on greening the building better.
While it is admirable that NAHB has created a system that may allow homebuilders to more easily build green houses, this rating system still ignores one of the most important aspects of sustainable design which is the design of the community itself. If we are still forced to have sprawling single-use developments are we any better off if the homes themselves are psuedo-green? This certification system would have made considerably more sense if it had been paired with something like LEED-ND or a similar NAHB system. If anything this new system will only serve as a marketing tool to help builders differentiate themselves in a protracted down market.
Even LEED isn't perfect given that it doesn't weight environmental criteria according to impact. http://blog.terrachoice.com/2008/01/17/how-to-create-environmental-standards/
But you're right, anything that moves people in the right direction is probably a good thing.
The NAHB has not won my admiration. This is the industry group that has lobbied for lower standards in building codes, recently pulled its funding from congressmen because it didn't get an industry bailout, and has protected even bad builders by having a legal defense arm that swoops in to pay for defense costs if the outcome could hold all builders more accountable for misdeeds, (like code violations, environmental violations, etc). This is the industry that contributed to the housing bubble by being among the parties that opened up mortgage co's to create and push toxic loans, and pressure appraisers to inflate house values artificially. This is the industry that lobbied for Brownfield legislation so that developers were off the hook for houses built on contaminated ground if it was later discovered it wasn't properly remediated. I could go on and on. I certainly didn't trust the NAHB to earnestly get into Green Building, any more than I trust it to regulate itself on any other issues. This is a prime example of the fox guarding the henhouse.
The last poster is right. NAHB fights hard against any energy or building code upgrade and it has been clearly proven that codes are the best mechanism for increasing efficiency of a building (see DOE data). This was the group that fought tooth and nail against standardizing stair heights to avoid injuries. In 2006, NAHB put so much political pressure on DOE that DOE actually pulled support from an update to the IECC. Don't trust these folks at all. The author points out that it could help broaden the instances of environmental building, and that is true, but sadly NAHB is not a group that should be given any credit for supporting green building.
While I am always skeptical I am also optimistic. Greening a little at a time is better than criticizing (and potentially dis-incentivising) small progress because it doesn't solve every problem at once. Home "Green-ness" can now become a market-influencing commodity. That's a good thing.
Can you tell a newbie where this is - is it Canada (it's appears to authored in Toronto) or is it some other country?
I work in the green building industry and one of the things that I continually see is this some what negative "LEED-lite" view of the NAHB program. Not all cities are "lite." In St. Louis we have a very strict, well verified program that mirrors LEED nearly exactly. It's not as stringent, but in this city, it's certainly not lite.