Faced with one of the worst housing markets in decades, the Bay Area home-building industry, long opposed to mandatory environmental standards, has decided to give up and go green. In a move believed to be a first in the country, the Home Builders Association of Northern California today will ask the region's 101 cities and nine counties to impose green building standards that would reduce energy usage by 15 percent for every home built in the Bay Area.
It's not just about the planet. With home sales sinking to historic lows, many builders have discovered that in the environmentally conscious Bay Area, green sells. "This is not a fad, this is where things are going," said Joseph Perkins, president of the home builders association, which represents 100 publicly traded and private builders, including major developers such as KB Home, Pulte and Centex.
That's not news to the Bay Area's largest two cities. Both San Jose and San Francisco already are working on their own green building codes for residential and commercial real estate. Smaller cities, such as Los Altos, Livermore, Pleasanton and San Rafael, already have them in place. And that's exactly the problem this proposal seeks to address by bringing uniformity to the hodgepodge of regulations that now dot the region. Because even builders admit green is inevitable. "Buyers and residents are totally embracing green.
They understand the issues facing us with global warming," said Cheryl O'Connor, who as vice president for marketing of Warmington Homes pushed to make its Vantage housing development in Palo Alto one of the greenest in the region. She found that building the 76-townhome community with solar panels on every roof and a dual-flush toilet in every bathroom resulted in twice as many sales as non-green developments. "People are willing to pay extra for a new home that has green features as opposed to an older home that uses more energy."
Perkins plans to announce the proposal today at the California Public Utilities Commission summit in San Francisco. Experts say his proposal on behalf of home builders puts the Bay Area at the forefront of the green construction movement. "This will have a huge impact," said Panama Bartholomy, an adviser to the California Energy Commission, because most homes in the state are built by production or large-scale builders as opposed to smaller, custom builders. "The builders now building in Northern California will . . . see how easy it is to build environmentally friendly," Bartholomy said. "I promise you that they will take it beyond the Bay Area. You will see it across the nation."
Buildings account for 40 percent of carbon emissions in the United States, and residential buildings are roughly half of that, said Jason Hartke, director for advocacy and public policy for the U.S. Green Building Council. Hartke, who is familiar with the proposed guidelines, said he has never heard of a home builder group asking for mandatory standards. "It's extremely important that we begin to look to residential building as part of the solution to the climate issues that we face."
Not to say it won't be a hard sell. Since green building became the darling of the environmental movement, builders everywhere have fought efforts to mandate these policies, saying they were too expensive and too difficult to incorporate. And not all builders are convinced that green sells homes. "Buyers in the community at large are very interested in green products and going green," said Chris Apostolopoulos, division president for KB Home, one of the region's biggest builders. "However, they're not willing to pay for it."
Nevertheless, he's willing to support mandatory standards if only because it promises fewer headaches by offering consistency. San Jose
Source: San Jose Mercury News