Is Your Phoenix New Home Really Green or Is It Efficient

Is Your Phoenix New Home Really Green or Is It Efficient

Different shades of green

Over the past six months, large-scale home builders have incorporated claims of environmental friendliness into their marketing efforts like never before.

Some of those claims are even backed by real improvements in design, construction and materials.

Still, home designers and builders who were green before green was gold say the mass-market version of their philosophy often misses the point. Philip Beere bristles when asked about mainstream home builders' recent appropriation of the word green.

Beere recently remodeled a 1960s home in central Phoenix to obtain the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold Certification, which is about as green as it gets.

"I think it's great that the big builders are getting on board to make a better home," said Beere, a green-leaning Scottsdale entrepreneur who formed Green Street Development in 2007 with proceeds from his successful cleaning business, Ecofresh Planet.

"However, it should be advertised for what it is, which is an efficient home, not a green home."

Sure, custom-home builders may be painting with a deeper shade of green, Shea Homes executives say, but their company has a much broader brush.

San Diego-based Shea Homes, one of the country's largest home builders, launched an initiative in January to reduce the overall carbon footprint - the carbon-based pollution caused by human activities - of each new home inside its Trilogy communities by 20 to 30 percent.

The homes also feature better ventilation, conserve more water and require less lumber to build, said Hal Looney, area president of Shea Homes Active Lifestyle Communities.

Though they do not meet all the Green Building Council's certification requirements, the overall reduction in environmental impact will be significant, he said.

"We're building a couple of thousand homes, so the impact will be a lot greater than four or five custom homes," Looney said.

Shea Homes estimates that over the next 10 years, the implementation of its Shea Green Certified Home program will save the equivalent of more than 8.5 million gallons of gasoline and have the same carbon-reducing effect as planting 1.9 million trees.

"It will be a better place for everybody," Looney said.

Arizona State University architect Daniel Glenn said he supports the efforts of mass-market home builders to reduce consumption of energy and natural resources, but being green is not that easy.

"It's really problematic to think about building green when you're talking about these large-scale bedroom communities," he said, "because large-scale bedroom communities are inherently not green."

Glenn, associate director of ASU's Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family, said production home builders have developed a tendency to "green-wash" practices that actually contribute to the pollution problem.

The biggest problem has to do with where they are building homes: places like Trilogy at Vistancia, more than 30 miles from downtown Phoenix, in Peoria.

"The further out you go, the less green it is by definition," Glenn said, which is why the Green Building Council strongly encourages in-fill development and urban redevelopment.

"You can have the greenest home in the world, but if your commute is 20 to 30 miles, you're not living a green lifestyle."

But what if the homeowner drives a Toyota Prius, which gets up to 50 miles per gallon? Shea is including a new Prius with every Trilogy home, Looney said.

Again, Glenn applauded Shea for attempting to reduce the environmental impact of its remote location.

Still, he said commuting 30 miles each way in a Prius doesn't leave much time for community-building, another pillar of the green philosophy.

"Is people spending three hours a day in a car socially beneficial?" he said.

Valley real-estate analyst RL Brown said large home builders have avoided revolutionizing the industry to reduce the carbon footprint of their communities, because their customers have been far more concerned about price than environmental impact.

Beere plans to put his custom green-home project on the market next week at a list price of $882,680, enough money to buy two midrange Shea Green Certified homes.

But consumer attitudes about the value of conservation are changing, Brown said, due in part to rising energy costs and concerns about global climate change.

"I think we're going to see, finally, the coming of the green, with serious efforts and not just lip service," he said.

Looney said large builders such as Shea have the ability to make green homes affordable to the middle class by ordering enviro-friendly products in bulk and teaching contractors new techniques that conserve resources.

Glenn said frugal home buyers should consider paying a bit more for a home that will reduce their energy consumption, because no one knows what will happen to energy prices in the future.

"You can't get a 30-year, fixed-rate energy bill," he said.

Source: J. Craig Anderson - The Arizona Republic