Green Building News

It’s final – at least to the extent any government agency’s pronouncement is final: homeowners who borrowed money through Property Assessed Clean Energy funding programs to pay for energy efficiency upgrades, including solar power installations, can’t refinance their mortgages without first paying off their PACE loans, according to guidance issued this week by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which underwrite most of the mortgages approved in the U.S.

Just like a home’s energy performance and overall green credibility can diminish – or evaporate, in the opinion of some green advocates – when it is designed to McMansion dimensions, the market appeal of a McMansion can erode as homebuyers’ tastes change and they shift their priorities to reducing energy costs, landing a loan they can more easily afford, and using the home as source of shelter rather than speculative investment.

Confusion is a powerful marketing tool. It often plays a fundamental role – sometimes for the better, but usually not – in the marketing of a wide variety of products and ideas, from consumer goods to government policy and political candidates to, most certainly, homes. And when it comes to the latter, consumers face few sources of confusion more potent than the word green.

Heliotrope, a solar-powered house in Frieberg, Germany, with just under 2,000 sq. ft. of interior space, is hard to pass up as a blog item.

After a sputtering start, the delivery of services under the expanded Weatherization Assistance Program has in most communities finally gotten up to speed. Now the Department of Energy, which runs the WAP, is looking for ways to enhance the energy efficiency improvements made to the low-income homes targeted by the program while also developing financial models and encouraging partnerships that will help keep the weatherization wagon rolling after its stimulus-funded grants have been spent.

There are so many Victorian-era homes still in service in the U.K., it is small wonder they’re among the prime targets for remodelers striving to increase the energy efficiency of Britain’s housing stock. So it's no surprise the planned remodel of an 1860s Victorian row-house to Passivhaus performance standards has attracted the attention of many of the country’s residential retrofitters.

A lot of Habitat for Humanity affiliates have been pushing hard to boost the performance of the homes that they, their homebuyer-clients, and teams of volunteers build, all the while keeping final costs in the affordable realm.

Short of training as a Passive House consultant, one way to immerse yourself in Passive House technology and practice is to have a home built to the standard and then live in it. That’s what Sarah Evans and her husband, Stuart Rue, have done with their two-story project in Salem, Oregon, which broke ground in August 2009 and earned certification by Passive House Institute US last month.

Wales is pursuing an aggressive low-carbon policy for residential and commercial construction, with strict requirements for energy efficiency, water consumption, and use of sustainable materials set to take effect September 1.

On August 29, 2007, Montreal-based architect Sevag Pogharian broke ground on Alstonvale Net Zero House, a project whose ambitious energy efficiency design earned it one of 12 berths in the 2007 edition of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s EQuilibrium Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative program.