Your Next Green Home

“CSR for Dummies” is an Earth911.com series highlighting the different pledges and commitments made by companies in regards to product stewardship and recycling. Companies and services featured do not pay for placement and are not endorsed by Earth911.com.

In the past, homebuilders have been reluctant to add new features to homes, especially if they raise construction costs. But this year, even in the midst of a housing crisis, builders are thinking green. Their customers are demanding it. This is a good thing. For a long time, consumers had limited options, purchasing under-insulated homes that are poorly planned for energy efficiency.

This trend couldn’t go on forever, and now it is coming to a stop with new green building certification programs and pressure on public homebuilders to release CSRs (Corporate Sustainability Reports), just like other industries do. This affects both the home offered to the consumer, and the process of homebuilding itself.

Green Accountability

KB Home (NYSE: KBH), one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., issued its first ever sustainability report this summer. It’s a comprehensive review of the company’s progress toward sustainability.

In 2007, KB Home launched its My Home. My Earth.™ environmental initiative, which talks about the different ways the company can become a leading, environmentally friendly, national business while still creating a company-wide sustainability culture.

Statistics

More than 85 percent of the total energy consumption during a home’s life cycle stems from the energy used in day-to-day living. KB Home’s greatest opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint of its homes is to provide energy-efficient features and educate homebuyers about how to conserve energy over the lifetime of their homes.

From 2001 through 2007, KB Home built 53,541 energy-efficient homes. These included:

• 44,136 ENERGY STAR® qualified homes
• 9,405 ComfortWise® certified homes

According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formulas, together these homes reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 140,000 metric tons annually, estimated to be equivalent to removing over 26,000 cars from our roads each year.  The annual utility bill savings for these homes combined adds up to almost $24 million.

Looking Forward

According to KB Home, every new home built by the company beginning in 2008 will feature only ENERGY STAR® qualified appliances. This policy means that, going forward, the carbon footprint of every one of KB’s homes – as well as its owners’ energy bills – will be reduced, at no additional cost to its homebuyers.

Even without the more stringent requirements for ENERGY STAR® qualified homes, new home construction built to today’s standard building and energy codes produces homes that are up to 30 percent more energy efficient than homes built as recently as the 1990s, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Of course, the report also says that as part of KB Home’s customer-focused Built to Order™ home buying process, which gives buyers the ability to choose options that personalize their home, homebuyers can increase their home’s energy efficiency by adding products from the My Home. My Earth.™ line of KB Home Studio options. Translation: upgrade to higher levels of green, if you don’t mind paying more.

The sustainability report details a number of construction process improvements, including:

• Minimizing waste during construction
• Increasing the use of building materials made with recycled content
• Using building materials more efficiently
• Planning more sustainable communities and preserving natural resources

The report also lists specific, measurable actions the company will take in support of its sustainability objectives:

• Establish a company-wide standard that all homes will be fully compliant with today’s ENERGY STAR® certification requirements beginning with new communities opening in 2009
• Construct new homes utilizing low-VOC paint and low_VOC carpet beginning in 2009
• In 2009, establish a National Community Advisory Board to advise senior executives on its company-wide and national efforts
• Develop key performance indicators for sustainability, as well as the systems for measuring them
• Provide public updates on the progress KB Home makes towards its sustainability commitments and actions