Green Homes Are About to Get Their Own Standard

Going green is about to get a bit easier with the introduction of the National Green Building Standard, the first-ever standard focused on green home building. Jointly produced by the International Code Council (ICC) and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the document is based on the NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines, which provide a baseline for determining minimum thresholds for resource-efficient, cost-effective home building. The organizations hope to release the National Green Building Standard this spring.

While there are several green home building programs available, such as the U.S Green Building Councils’ LEED for Homes rating system and Green Globes (which is offered for use in the United States by the Green Building Initiative), none are standards. Even more important, says Allan Bilka of ICC, none have gone through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards development process, which requires the use of a consensus committee to help guide the development of standards.

“The process of going through ANSI makes it necessary that more voices are heard and that their feedback is applied in accordance with strict and objective guidelines. So it’s more of an open process that has facilitated balanced involvement by manufacturers, builders, building officials and the public, including anyone concerned with the effects of the buildings on the environment,” Bilka says.

NAHB’s Model Green Home Building Guidelines already form the basis for more than 15 state and local green building programs throughout the United States. But according to Bilka, going through the ANSI process has helped the organizations develop an even stronger standard than the guidelines on which it is based.

“Although we started with general principles from the guidelines, there has been quite a bit of meat added… NAHB did a great job in the formulation of the original guidelines, but with the involvement of the consensus committee, certainly you have various interested parties, with each naturally more focused on the interaction of the standard with their specific area of expertise. That’s not necessarily bad, because knowing how the application of these provisions is going to affect these diverse interested parties should only serve to ensure that the abstract environmental goals of the standard are achievable in the real world.”

By developing the standard, ICC and NAHB hope to provide local jurisdictions with a way to evaluate the performance of residential buildings in accordance with the standard. It is also designed to provide builders with easy-to-understand guidelines for building environmentally friendly homes using sustainable building practices.

The new standard could also help better define just what it means when homebuilders say they’re green.

“Jurisdictions could have voluntary programs where you’re not forced to be green, but if you choose to be green, you could choose to conform with the requirements of the standard where it has been adopted, and the jurisdiction (or adopting entity, as defined in the standard) could then rate and certify a building’s impact on the environment in accordance with the requirements of the standard,” Bilka says.

Finalization of the National Green Building Standard is expected to be soon, but will depend on the comments received during the latest public comment period, which ended February 4. For the latest information on the standard, visit www.nahbrc.org/gbstandard.

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