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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Mayors luncheon focuses on green building

Expert: Incentive-driven standards good for industry, government

By , Columbian Business Editor
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Michael Luzier, president of Home Innovation Research Labs, told an audience of Clark County mayors, local officials, and builders on Friday that green building standards can reduce government costs for infrastructure and environmental mitigation.
Michael Luzier, president of Home Innovation Research Labs, told an audience of Clark County mayors, local officials, and builders on Friday that green building standards can reduce government costs for infrastructure and environmental mitigation. He said the housing development industry is embracing his firm's national standards in some communities. Photo Gallery

Michael Luzier wants to make it easier for homebuilders to be green.

Luzier, president and CEO of the Maryland-based Home Innovation Research Labs, thinks his company’s incentive-driven green building standards are a powerful tool for driving innovation in an industry that’s historically been slow to change.

Speaking Friday to Clark County mayors and local officials at an invitation-only luncheon hosted by the Building Industry Association of Clark County, Luzier said the National Green Building Standard, adopted as a voluntary standard by Clark County in 2010, is taking root in places as different as North Carolina and Indiana. In just six years it has become the most widely used green building standard in the residential development industry, accounting for 26 percent of green building certifications, he said.

A handful of Clark County builders are now meeting the standards for environmentally friendly homes that they believe give them an edge in the competitive marketplace. Among them are Troy Johns, owner of Urban NW Homes and chairman of the Building Industry Association’s green building council, who introduced Luzier at the Grant House luncheon.

The Home Innovation Research Labs operates as a testing and research firm that operates as an independent subsidiary of the National Association of Home Builders. Its National Green Building Standards were developed by an advisory group whose members included building code officials, product manufacturers, builders and public representatives. The range of performance measures — Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Emerald — within that set of standards allows builders to select designations that are suited to their own communities’ values and pocketbooks, Luzier said. It’s a system that encourages competition, as builders ratchet up their performance in order to win a competitive edge, raising the bar for the industry, he said.

“Choice is good, and leads to good decisions,” he said.

Luzier contrasted the open process used in development of the National Green Building Standards to that of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification program, for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, widely used in commercial buildings. That standard, he said, is based on what he called a “black box” of standards developed by architects in a system closed to outside participation or review.

Luzier said following his presentation that the LEED system has been difficult for small builders to embrace because of its higher costs.

One challenge facing green builders who meet the National Green Building Standards is gaining recognition within the industry’s pricing mechanisms of the higher market value of a home, Luzier said. Appraisers generally don’t take into account green features when establishing a home’s price, sometimes creating a mismatch between a developer’s asking price and an appraised price, he said. Because the use of green standards is so recent, it remains too early to tell if those design and construction elements will increase a home’s resale value, he said.

While his organization clearly favors a free-market approach, that doesn’t mean that there’s no role for government, Luzier noted. Some communities have begun offering incentives to developers who meet standards that minimize the impact of development on the environment. Incentives range from tax credits to density bonuses to simply a shortcut to the front of the line for building permits, he said. Government wins in not having to invest in more infrastructure or environmental mitigation, he said.

“The market absorbs those costs instead of the government,” Luzier said.

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Columbian Business Editor