Energy Efficiency Should Be the Foundation for All Buildings

Many homeowners may ask, "What's the rush?" but Mazria cautioned that once the forces causing global warming gain a certain momentum, they cannot be stopped -- if we wait another 10 or 15 years to do something, it may be too late to be effective.

The embrace of the 2030 Challenge by architects is significant because they determine the specifications and materials used in the buildings they design, with input from clients who pay for the projects.

But architects do not design everything that is built. Their practices, for the most part, deal with industrial, commercial, government and institutional projects.

In single-family housing, architects design about one-third of the houses that are built, but they write the specifications for only about 8 percent of them. Home builders determine the specs for the other 92 percent.

Home builders must follow the energy-performance standards in local codes, but these have not yet addressed global warming. Any measures taken in this regard are the builders' call. What actions they take will depend on what they think buyers will pay for.

And that's where mom and dad come in. When they start to insist on energy efficiencies that will reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with the house they are buying, the builders will listen.

It's easy for every new-home buyer to say: "What difference will my house make to global warming? It's only one of more than a million that will be built in the next year." True enough -- by itself, your house won't make much difference. But if every new-home buyer insists that builders ratchet up the energy efficiencies in all of the new houses they sell, the difference will be significant.

How ready are mom and dad to step up to the plate? Gopal Ahluwalia, a researcher with the National Association of Home Builders who has studied new-home buyer trends for more than 30 years, said that home buyers have some concerns about the environment, but in most cases these are not affecting their home-purchase decisions.

When Ahluwalia asked focus groups considering a new-home purchase whether they would spend an additional $5,000 to make a $100,000 house more environmentally benign, only 17 percent of the respondents enthusiastically embraced the idea. Half said they wanted an environmentally friendly home but wouldn't pay more for it, a quarter said their environmental concerns would not affect their housing purchase, and 11 percent said they had no concerns about the environment.

At the same time, Ahluwalia said the "must-have" features for most new-home buyers increase energy use. For example, most buyers want higher ceilings to create the illusion of a bigger house, even though raising the ceiling from 8 feet to 9 feet increases the volume of space to be heated and cooled by 12.5 percent. Raising the ceiling to 10 feet, an increasingly popular option in some markets, increases the volume of air even more.

Everybody seems to want a two-story foyer to impress their guests, and this also adds to a house's volume. Fireplaces send heat right up the chimney, and buyers' insistence on flooding their rooms with natural light means lots of windows that can't capture heat as well as a solid wall can.

Somewhat contradictorily, buyers do pay attention to conventional energy-saving features such as windows with dual panes, low-emission glass (which has a thin metal coating that reduces heat loss) and added insulation in the walls. But Ahluwalia said buyers' interests do not extend to features they consider exotic -- for example, a 90 percent efficient gas furnace or blown-in cellulose insulation that will plug up air leaks that cause uncomfortable drafts in the winter.

The easiest way for homeowners to reduce their fossil-fuel consumption is to buy a smaller house, but so far this idea has had no traction. Buyers are still fixated on more space, although the rate at which house size is increasing has slowed, Ahluwalia said. As of July 2006, it had increased less than 1 percent above the 2005 average size of 2,436 square feet. Large houses of more than 3,000 square feet still command 20 percent of the market, but Ahluwalia said the number of mega-houses in the 7,500-square-foot to 10,000-square-foot range has slowed.

The attraction of the very large houses is not the added function, Ahluwalia said. The attitude of the buyers seems to be: "I can afford it, so why not?"

Perhaps global warming is the reason to change course.

Katherine Salant can be contacted via her Web site,http://www.katherinesalant.com.

2007Katherine Salant Distributed by Inman News Features