The data continues to look worse, and this video explains just how dire the situation is:

Yesterday, Green Builder Media hosted a webinar on selling and marketing green homes with CR Herro, VP Environmental Affairs for Meritage Homes. As always, CR delighted the crowd with compelling advice and unique insights into how to turn green building—considered a chore by some builders—into a brilliant business opportunity.

Builders haven’t historically been known for their marketing savvy, and many green builders have told us over the years that they have struggled with communicating the benefits of their advanced offerings to homebuyers.  Recently, production builders like Meritage Homes and KB Home have changed the game, marrying cost-effective, high performance, resource efficient, solar-powered homes and sophisticated marketing strategies.

By Merrian Borgeson and Pierre Delforge

The “decarbonization” of America’s building is critical to reducing carbon emissions by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, the amount scientists believe is necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change. California, long a national and world leader in fighting climate change, is already beginning to take a look at how to reduce the carbon pollution from fuels burned inside buildings for space and water heating.

Some metals do a remarkable thing when they’re placed within a magnetic field: They heat up. Remove the magnetic field, and they grow cold. It’s not difficult to see how this heating and cooling, known as the magnetocaloric effect, might be put to good use. Refrigerators and air conditioners could not only become more energy efficient but also be freed from century-old technology that relies on environmentally harmful refrigerants.

Researchers with ORNL’s Building Equipment Research Group are working with General Electric Appliances to produce a refrigerator based on the magnetocaloric effect. The ORNL team is also developing an air conditioner based on the same principle.

Capturing Solar Energy for Home Heat

ONE OF THE KEY POINTS I drive home to students in my passive solar design classes at the Evergreen Institute is to design new homes and businesses around the Sun. Put another way, the passive capture of the solar energy for home heat should be the central organizing principle when designing a new home.

The goal is to make reused and donated building materials easier for low-income residents to access in the Twin Cities area.

The only thing as bewildering as the endless parade of behemoth footprint projects offered under the TNAH program is this stale and disingenuous justification coughed up in each and every cycle to explain them.

One year ago, in the September 2015 edition of Green Builder, I employed this column to draw attention to the issue of house size. In the process, I called out the then newly announced “official” NAHB show home, The New American Home (TNAH), which was set to open during the January 2017 Design & Construction Week trade show in Orlando, Fla.

The Rural Renewable Energy Alliance is doing good work, combining a positive mission with renewable energy and now, beer. What's not to like?

I visited with Jay Edens, director of Rreal on a trip to the midwest last month. Edens has created an unlikely oasis of solar hope (i know that sounds cliche', but it's simply true) in the middle of rural Minnesota. Pine River. Population 900 plus or minus. The organization runs several different types of projects, from solar furnaces (wall-mounted passive solar heat) for low-income families on energy assistance (LIHEAP) to PV installations for community centers to educational outreach.

Codes are designed to keep homeowners and building occupants safe and protected. They play a critical role in protecting the environment as well.

The connection between codes and the climate may, at first blush, seem oblique. However, the two are intricately connected. Codes are designed to make homes and buildings stronger, safer, healthier, and more durable.  They’re designed to improve performance and energy savings.  And in so doing, codes play a pivotal role not just in protecting lives, but the planet as well.

Although many would like to see a 100 percent solar transition, a less "painful" path will likely involve biomass, wind and other renewable technologies for many years to come.

ALTHOUGH SOLAR ELECTRICITY and wind energy are growing by leaps and bounds, they only provide a tiny fraction of today’s electrical demand. As global supplies of fossil fuel resources decline and as concern over global climate change increases, however, solar electric systems could become a major source of electricity, along with wind and a host of other renewable energy technologies. But is there enough solar energy to produce enough electricity to meet our needs?

On display at this year's Solar Power International in Vegas, the Arc House is a Millennial's dream, not the lumbering McMansion of yesteryear.

I’m not a millennial, but I find myself intrigued by many of the things that seem to drive the interest and attention of that generation—smart technologies, clean energy, the circular economy, and tiny living. 

The report found clear advantages in an economy of scale, especially for large volume builders.

Key Findings:

•  PV systems installed in new construction tend to be small and have high incidence of premium modules (top chart)

•  Nevertheless, residential new construction systems in CA were $0.5/W less than retrofits in 2015.

When Obama took office, "Dubya" quietly slinked off into the shadows, with disapproval ratings in the 64 percent range. Now ULI is bringing him back.

Reading the lineup for the next ULI conference, I had to do a major double take.