Biography
MATT GOLDEN is cofounder and president of Sustainable Spaces. Founded in 2004, the San Francisco company is a full-service resource for homeowners who want to improve the comfort, health, and efficiency of their homes. Prior to founding the company, Golden worked as an energy consultant, developing solar power systems for homeowners and businesses. He serves on several boards, including Build It GreenProfessional, nonprofit membership organization that promotes healthy, energy- and resource-efficient buildings in California. It was formed in 2005 in a merger of Bay Area Build It Green and The Green Resource Center of Berkeley. Headquartered in Berkeley, Build It Green offers professional training and other support services, maintains a regional green products database, and administers the Green Point Rated home certification program. and the Department of Energy (DOEUnited States Department of Energy.) Home Performance Council.
Green Story
"To me, green building means beginning with the basics and fixing what we already have," avows Matt Golden. "Building new, efficient housing is not the greenest thing we can do if we aren’t working to improve what we already have."
Golden points out that, in the United States, residential housing accounts for almost 21% of the carbon footprintAmount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that a person, community, industry, or other entity contributes to the atmosphere through energy use, transportation, and other means.
. "Even if every home built from here on out was a green building, we still have all of this existing housing stock that is not efficient, and will continue to leave a huge carbon footprint," he explains.
So in 2004, Golden created Sustainable Spaces. The company's focus is to use science and technology to qualitatively and quantitatively upgrade and retrofit homes, improving their efficiency, comfort, and healthful qualities.
It's the logical conclusion to a career quest that began with construction ("My dad was a developer, so I got all the really horrible jobs!"), moved on to architecture ("I realized I couldn't draw"), and jumped into the solar industry just after the first net-metering regulations were passed in California ("which really was the genesis of the solar industry as we know it today").
"I’ve always been committed to living a sustainable lifestyle and being conscientious about my personal impact on the environment," Golden says. In 2001, he decided to align his career and environmental goals and became an energy consultant focused on commercial and residential solar power. But he soon realized that what he was doing only offered a point solution; it didn’t really help people make their homes and lives more sustainable. "I realized that, even if we implemented solar power systems on existing homes, we still were not attacking the underlying issue of maximizing a home’s performance by properly sealing ducts, or installing insulation that would help lessen energy loads to make solar systems more efficient," he says now.
Thus the impetus behind Sustainable Spaces, a company that considers the whole picture. "Not everyone can make their home 100% green and zero energy on the first pass, but by creating a comprehensive plan homeowners can begin the path towards sustainability and see real results on almost any budget," Golden says.
