GBA Logo horizontal Facebook LinkedIn Email Pinterest Twitter Instagram YouTube Icon Navigation Search Icon Main Search Icon Video Play Icon Plus Icon Minus Icon Picture icon Hamburger Icon Close Icon Sorted
Green Building Blog

Does Green Building Cost More?

GREEN HOUSES CAN COST MORE TO BUILD, BUT LESS TO RUN. Even modest houses in modest neighborhoods can be built green. This LEED certified home in Omaha, Nebraska cost a little more to build, but should cost very little to live in and maintain.
Image Credit: Daniel Morrison / Fine Homebuilding

Green Building is Better Building, and Better Building is More Expensive.

Learning curve certification and better construction details may come at a premium, but the cost will flatten out. The costs of not building green however, will keep going up.

When I teach about green building, someone in the audience always asks the inevitable question: “How much does it cost?” After answering this question several gazillion times, I’ve realized that it boils down to three queries:
1. What does a green rating cost?
2. What’s the learning curve?
3. What will it cost to change the way I build?

You pay for the rating, you get quality assurance
The first question is the only one with a simple answer. A green rating will cost whatever price is charged by the rater. It’s usually a small fraction of the overall cost of the project and ranges from several hundred up to a few thousand dollars. This depends on type of home(s), location, timing, and the amount of technical support you need.

What’s often overlooked is that most of the cost is for field verification. This is fundamentally a quality assurance activity—something that is all too frequently lacking in the home building industry. This is a good investment!

Learning curves: change is inevitable—adapt or go belly-up
The second cost, while the hardest to predict accurately, can be addressed in a way that most businesspeople immediately grasp: organizations must absorb change routinely; this is simply the cost of staying in business. These ordinary learning-curve costs come from developing new supplier relationships, recruiting and training new personnel, investigating new products and technologies, grappling with new requirements or regulations, and other things. But these costs drop off quickly.

What’s notable about the learning-curve costs is that it’s common to attribute them to the particular green building project. However, in reality if you undertake the learning curve it’s because you’ve decided that green building is a sound business direction and will benefit your future market position. These costs are no different from continuing education, updating marketing literature, or developing a new website.

The bottom line depends on your shade of green
The third cost can be quantified, but there’s no one-size-fits-all answer—it depends on where you start and where you want to be. Building practices exist on a spectrum, from bare-bones and barely-legal to net-zero-energy and beyond. Getting from point A to point B is relative.

Consider a Hyundai producer who decides to convert the production line over to Honda. The products are generally comparable in size, weight, and look. However, the Honda is (arguably) more durable, better engineered, and more fuel efficient. The Honda also costs a fair amount more. If, however, you’re a Hummer producer and convert to Honda production, your prices won’t increase (they may actually go down), and you’ll incorporate dramatic performance improvements—at least from an environmental impact perspective.

Similarly, builders of modest homes who upgrade to green may experience a cost increase. (However, they also may command a higher selling price or faster sales.) Builders of large homes may find opportunities to incorporate efficiencies without experiencing any significant cost increase. For example, a slight decrease in size combined with better up-front design may be a break-even proposition, or better windows and insulation may be offset by reductions in the size of the mechanical equipment. The premiums, when they exist, will disappear as energy prices head for the stratosphere and the value of green becomes more of a no-brainer.

Green building is an investment, not a cost
Answering this cost question requires that you identify exactly what green building practices or products you will use that differ from your status quo, and cost out those changes. This process means gathering detailed data from staff, consultants, and subcontractors and then value-engineering based on the outcomes. This type of analysis may be essential if you’re working for a production builder with stockholders to satisfy.

In a smaller, more informal company, just understanding what changes you will need to make may be enough. Either way, you’ll need to understand where you are and where you want to be on the Hyundai-Honda-Hummer spectrum. And if you do decide to retool your product line, keep in mind that it may not be realistic to expect your product to cost the same, or to sell at the same price point. It’s no longer the same product; it’s a better one.

—Ann V. Edminster is an architect and Principal of Design Avenues in Pacifica, California. She is also a GreenBuildingAdvisor at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

 

One Comment

  1. user-282515 | | #1

    Costs of Green Building
    Recently a study was published by Good Energies, a global energy efficiency and renewable energy investment company, that analyzed nearly 150 green-built buildings in 10 different countries to try to get a handle on the truth about the additional costs and benefits of building green. There were some surprising conclusions. Among them:

    * On average, the "public" perceives the additional costs to build green at about 17%.
    * In reality, the median additional costs for building green proved to be less than 2%.
    * Over half of the buildings studied had a green building payback period of less than five years from energy and water savings alone.
    * Up front infrastructure development costs in "conservation developments" can be reduced by 25%, or approximately $10,000 per home.

    The study can be viewed at http://www.goodenergies.com/news/research-knowledge.php?WYSESSID=tun32chvup25s4olcq5nuhpb21

    I agree that Green Building is an investment, not a cost. From my many years of experience with production builders, I have found one constant to be true: Increasing shareholder value seldom, if ever, gets anyone a quality home because the very nature of that model encourages cost-cutting and lack of quality to increase profits.

Log in or create an account to post a comment.

Related

Community

Recent Questions and Replies

  • |
  • |
  • |
  • |