A Production Builder's Lessons Learned Minimizing Embodied Carbon

00:00:03:02 - 00:00:30:13
Mike Collignon: We are in the middle of American Education Week, so it's only fitting that we're holding an educational webinar today. We're going to be talking about the embodied carbon that it takes to build homes. Now that amount is actually much greater than the carbon emitted from our operations. Our guest today has learned some hard lessons from his extensive experience on the front lines of both Zero Energy Ready Homes and the implementation of embodied carbon reduction strategies.

00:00:30:13 - 00:00:56:09
Mike Collignon: And that guest would be the esteemed Jean Myers of Thrive Homebuilders. Jean and his company are six time winners of the Department of Energy's Grant Award for innovation, and the first production builder to deliver solar standard homes, build net zero communities, and use Colorado beetle kill lumber in the construction of their homes. Now, we couldn't bring this great education to you without our sponsors.

00:00:56:10 - 00:01:24:21
Mike Collignon: The first is Schneider Electric, who is driving the digital transformation of modern homes with the smart and sustainable energy solutions for ultimate comfort and energy efficiency. They're connected home ecosystem of smart energy management solutions provides digital control of energy use throughout a home from the grid via their smart electrical panel to their connected wiring devices. This grid to plug solution makes it significantly easier to create smart solar power and backup power ready homes, both now and in the future.

00:01:24:28 - 00:01:53:08
Mike Collignon: Next is Panasonic Healthy Indoor Living Solutions. They're helping builders across the country differentiate themselves with powerful, code compliant and cost effective indoor air quality solutions that provide a safer environment for home buyers. Genco solar is a leading PV module manufacturer and energy storage system integrator. The company has deployed more than 100GW of their Eagle modules in 160 countries globally, including more than 17GW right here in the United States.

00:01:53:10 - 00:02:23:08
Mike Collignon: Eagle storage brings together the best energy storage technology for turnkey hardware and energy storage services. Eagle is a trusted choice for US solar and storage projects, and our newest sponsor this year is LG. As a leading proponent of the electrification movement. LG is proud to pave the way with arguably the broadest portfolio of home electrification products, from air to air and air to water heat pumps for HVAC, water heaters, clothes dryers, and washer dryer combos.

00:02:23:13 - 00:02:48:14
Mike Collignon: Two advanced energy storage systems, EV chargers and super efficient appliances, including the first the industry's first Energy Star certified induction cooktop. LG's innovation and technology will help us promote decarbonization and collectively create a better life for all. Now, during the course of today's presentation, you can submit questions for Jean. Simply use the questions box inside the Go to Webinar Control panel.

00:02:48:15 - 00:02:58:05
Mike Collignon: I'll review those questions and pose them to Jean after his presentation. All right Jean, I am looking forward to the education today.

00:02:58:07 - 00:03:25:28
Gene Myers: Well hi everybody. I'm Jean Myers I'm in Denver today. It's a beautiful day. I am fighting a cold, so I hope you'll forgive my scratchy voice. I am I'm armed with my T to try to make it through. And so I hope you find this presentation interesting. So just a little bit about thrive. I started thrive back in 1992 and we've been doing workforce housing.

00:03:25:29 - 00:04:08:20
Gene Myers: Affordable housing, zero energy homes and healthy homes. All through that career, we built our company on several legs of our brand. The first is efficient. By that we mean energy efficiency. Mike, I should update the the introduction. We picked up our 14th Grand Award for housing innovation at the last IBA conference over the last 11 years. And so we're a big proponent of the Zero Energy Ready Home program, and a very strong proponent of all of the federal programs and the support that they give builders like us to build high performance homes.

00:04:08:22 - 00:04:35:09
Gene Myers: Healthy is another leg of our brand. USC, the EPA's Indoor Air Plus program has been a really important part of thrive. When we started it back in probably 2013, it seemed like particularly our competitors were kind of scratching their heads. What is health have to do with the home? And then the pandemic hit and we looked like geniuses.

00:04:35:10 - 00:05:12:12
Gene Myers: But we're not geniuses. But the EPA Indoor Plus program really is a great a great program that you can explain to customers really well. And if we have the capacity as builders that to build homes that make our residents healthier, we feel like we have an obligation to do that. Local is another leg of our brand. I have a friend who has a tomato where grow House, one of the few grow houses in Denver that aren't being used for some other purpose, I'm afraid to say.

00:05:12:14 - 00:05:47:18
Gene Myers: But he grows tomatoes for Whole foods and I asked him, so they're there, organic, and he said no. Their local Whole Foods customers really care about local. So we grabbed on to that, believing our customers care about that. Our market is really dominated by large national builders. And so this has been a big point of differentiation. Mike mentioned in the intro that we use pine beetle kill lumber in our houses.

00:05:47:20 - 00:06:11:05
Gene Myers: This beetle kill epidemic is a real deal out here in the West. There's a prediction out there that there won't be a single living lodgepole pine left in the state by the time this has run its course. And so we came up with this graphic and asked, is there anything good that can come from that? And yeah, we can build homes out of trees that have already died.

00:06:11:05 - 00:06:42:13
Gene Myers: We can renew our watersheds, we can take fuel out of the forest and mitigate wildfire risk. And our customers love that. Green. Green Builder magazine. Our presenter today has honored us as Green Home of the year and really appreciate all the support we've gotten over the years. I remember a few years back they named me a superhero and I'm no superhero, as you can tell from my voice.

00:06:42:13 - 00:07:11:23
Gene Myers: But green is another important aspect of our brand. Resilient is taken on more importance, and I'll talk a little bit about that at the end of the presentation, but it's really interesting. We in the West have been faced with wildfires and wildfire risks, smoke impacts, especially during the summer. It's interesting to me that now the northeast is really feeling it.

00:07:11:26 - 00:07:43:28
Gene Myers: Even New York City has had some really bad air days. And so we think that this resiliency with respect to fire risk is really important, and it's become a more important part of our brand. Speaking of smoke, I think during the pandemic, during the lockdown, we had a really kind of an infamous day on August 7th, 2021, when Denver had the worst air pollution in the world.

00:07:44:04 - 00:08:08:05
Gene Myers: And it wasn't even from anything we did. It was from smoke from the West Coast. And I remember sitting in my office, which had a mountain view, and the mountains weren't there. We're in the middle of the lockdown and I thought, well, at least here in Colorado we can get outside. And then we couldn't because of the smoke.

00:08:08:08 - 00:08:41:04
Gene Myers: And it really made me start to reevaluate what should really we really be focused on going forward. And one way to describe it would be we've been focused on the health of our customers for a long time, but it really hit me hard that we can't really have healthy customers if we're not living on a healthy planet. And so we started to pivot towards addressing climate change, and over these last several years, have come up with our own climate action plan.

00:08:41:04 - 00:09:15:01
Gene Myers: As a small builder, we all know we've just been through an interesting election cycle here in the US, and I think it's important to just recognize that climate change is real. It's the science. And we look at those CO2 levels. It's been hard for me to understand personally what that all means. And there's a website you can go to and you can kind of get that CO2 perspective over your own lifetime.

00:09:15:03 - 00:09:45:20
Gene Myers: I was I'm 73, I was born in 1951, and the day I was born, there were 312 parts per million of CO2. And today there's 422. It's interesting that over that 73 year span, it's gone up a little over 100 parts per million. The previous 73 year span, it only increased 22 parts per million. So we can see that this is increasing rapidly.

00:09:45:23 - 00:10:15:24
Gene Myers: But I really try to think, well then what's it going to be like for my granddaughter alma? When I was born, 312 parts per million when she was born, 422 parts per million when she's by age. According to Noah, the range could be in the 800,000 parts per million. And what will that world be like? I'm a home builder.

00:10:15:25 - 00:10:45:16
Gene Myers: I. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a climate scientist. I don't know what it'll be like, but my suspicion is it can't be good and that we really ought to be doing all we can to mitigate that. So why is our industry, as home builders important in terms of energy use? The residential sector accounts for 22% of energy use and for emissions about 17% of emissions.

00:10:45:19 - 00:11:17:22
Gene Myers: And when I think about, regardless of what our new administration does with respect to the Paris Agreement, there's no way that we'll reach any of those goals of carbon reduction goals without our industry participating, because we're such a big player. And so it seems as an imperative for our industry to try to start to figure this out. In Colorado, the evidence of climate change is all around us.

00:11:17:24 - 00:12:04:28
Gene Myers: I mentioned that beetle kill epidemic in Rocky Mountain National Park. This is a national park. It's supposed to be pristine. The entire west portal is is dead. Our cities in Colorado have approved climate action plans without state leadership and without federal leadership. And, you know, I, I really believe that regardless of what the federal policy is in this next administration, many of us will be dealing with local issues, local control, and we builders all know that we're a highly regulated industry, and that regulation is really coming from local government.

00:12:05:00 - 00:12:39:13
Gene Myers: I love the tagline on the Sustainable Breck Plan for Breckenridge, Colorado Sustaining What We love. And for me, that's very much about what drives me and drives all of us here at thrive is to really sustain this beautiful state where we live. And we're one of our major projects is in Denver, Colorado. It's now not permitted to actually heat home with natural gas and call in Denver.

00:12:39:15 - 00:13:22:09
Gene Myers: And you can see the goals of being 100% renewable by 2030. In Fort Collins, where we also build, they have a 100% carbon reduction or carbon neutrality goal by 2050 and 80% by 2030. I think to make my point, when the prior Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Agreement, 407 US mayors signed on to it. And so there's a really good chance that wherever you're building, you may be faced with these, regardless of the direction that the federal administration goes.

00:13:22:11 - 00:13:50:20
Gene Myers: But even more important, I believe our customers expect our homes to be part of the solution. Here in the West, we're in the midst of a 1200 year drought. We have more numerous and intense wildfires. I've mentioned this pine beetle epidemic. Our degrading air quality in the summer is a real factor affecting our quality of life. And when I encounter someone locally here that questions whether or not climate change is real.

00:13:50:21 - 00:14:28:11
Gene Myers: I ask them what their insurance company thinks about that. Colorado now has a third highest home insurance rates in the country, buying Florida in Texas even higher than California. And so this is a reality that we must deal with. But as a small builder, what can you really do? And our thought was we can leverage leverage our expertise that we've gained in these federal programs for energy efficiency and health in the home, and then do what we can to really do our part to address climate change.

00:14:28:13 - 00:15:00:11
Gene Myers: In 2023, we published our first ESG report. We hired a consultant, and we followed kind of the corporate ESG orthodoxy, tracking the UN Sustainable Development Goals. And honestly, it was kind of a tedious process. And after it was all over, I kind of had to ask myself the question, was it worth it? And I think it was worth it because it gave us a perspective to really focus on what matters.

00:15:00:18 - 00:15:34:24
Gene Myers: But honestly, for a company like thrive, wading through a lot of the detail of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, much of the social and governance content was insignificant compared to the real impact. And what was the impact? What we learned from our first ESG report, that our total corporate footprint, which is what most ESG reports are about, is the equivalent of only two of the homes we built that year.

00:15:34:27 - 00:15:59:16
Gene Myers: And so that conclusion down at the bottom of the slide is really our takeaway, that if builders are serious about addressing climate change, what matters most is the carbon footprint of the homes we build, not whether or not we clicked all the boxes on an ESG report. So for our 2024 sustainability report, we're focused on what we think matters most.

00:15:59:21 - 00:16:23:17
Gene Myers: First, we do have a corporate footprint, and we're taking the work of our consultant and applying that to future years so that we can at least take into account our corporate footprint. We then need to calculate the embodied carbon of the homes we build, add that to the operational carbon and come up with what our total footprint is.

00:16:23:19 - 00:16:42:19
Gene Myers: And for our 24 report, we're basically taking the entire fleet of homes that we delivered in 2023 and calculating that total footprint and putting it out there as a benchmark for us to work towards reducing in the future.

00:16:42:21 - 00:16:50:02
Gene Myers: I'm going to take a break here. Hang on a second.

00:16:50:04 - 00:17:25:03
Gene Myers: So what we we learned in our ESG report is that about one and a quarter metric tons per thousand square feet of every home we deliver is our corporate footprint. And so we're just going to rate that over the number of homes delivered in 2023. We delivered 71 homes. Our average heard score on those homes was 25. And so we began to calculate the embodied carbon of the homes we built.

00:17:25:05 - 00:17:50:18
Gene Myers: We've had a great partner in the University of Denver. Our thanks to Eric Holt in the Franklin Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management. He's had a team of grad students who have worked to calculate the footprint of our entire fleet of houses. And for those of you who aren't that familiar with embodied carbon, it's the footprint of a building before it becomes operational.

00:17:50:21 - 00:18:19:04
Gene Myers: So think of it as all the carbon emissions associated with producing all the parts and pieces of a house. So first we need to deal what's in our homes. We start with the building materials, and we've been using the My Tech software. My tech is a a big company in the component manufacturing world. They have 3D modeling of homes.

00:18:19:04 - 00:18:53:19
Gene Myers: And from that we can get an automated building materials. We then repurpose that software with the building materials and we enter that into, along with the environmental product declarations of all those pieces and parts. Add them up and we end up with the embodied carbon. This is about to get a lot simpler. ResNet and the whole rating industry is working on an embodied carbon index.

00:18:53:22 - 00:19:19:08
Gene Myers: It's likely not to be as granular, at least at the beginning, as this exercise that we've gone through with the University of Denver. But it is going to be something that will be included in every energy rating that you get for an energy rated home. And so to me, that's what the industry needs is a really simple way to at least benchmark.

00:19:19:08 - 00:19:34:12
Gene Myers: If it's not totally accurate, I don't think it matters. At least it's a benchmark that we can can then compare home to home builder builder in year to year as we track our progress on embodied carbon.

00:19:34:15 - 00:20:12:06
Gene Myers: University of Denver entered that building materials into one click LCA. They had previously done a study that is now published on the Green Builder Media website, evaluating 6 or 7 different carbon calculating platforms, and ask the question, which one of those platforms is really most appropriate for a builder and landed on one click LCA. So for our total fleet of homes that we delivered in 2023, we're at 4700 metric tons.

00:20:12:09 - 00:20:39:28
Gene Myers: And here's some rough metrics that you might be able to use on the homes of you build our average single family house at about 180 metric tons of CO2. And then our townhomes, about a fourth of that are about 40 metric tons of CO2. And so there's some round numbers that you could use even without going through all of the calculations.

00:20:40:01 - 00:21:11:18
Gene Myers: The next step in is the operational carbon, the amount of carbon emitted from the energy used to operate the building. And that includes a all that list that you see on the slide, particularly heating, cooling, lighting and so on. And that is also getting much easier to calculate. Now, included in every Herz rating that you get on your homes is a Herz carbon index, and I don't think it's being utilized by very many builders.

00:21:11:20 - 00:21:37:16
Gene Myers: My thanks to Steve Buyers and his company Energy Logic, who really helped us dissect the energy ratings on all of the homes that we delivered in 2023. To begin to add up. What is that Herz carbon index? Here's an example of the sample output. And.

00:21:37:18 - 00:22:05:03
Gene Myers: The real numbers that you could use would be that our average single family operational carbon is about two metric tons per year. Our average operational carbon for a townhouse house is two and a half. And that may seem not intuitive, especially since the embodied carbon of a single family house was about over four times the embodied carbon of the townhouse.

00:22:05:05 - 00:22:25:16
Gene Myers: The reason is that we have a lot more solar on the roofs for our single family than we do on our townhouses, and so there's less of an offset of the energy being utilized in home with onsite generation. So that's the explanation for that.

00:22:25:18 - 00:22:47:10
Gene Myers: A lot of times you'll see a graph a little bit like this where you'll see embodied carbon, that it starts off at a number and just stays flat over time because it doesn't change over time. And then we have the operational carbon that's growing in our case, at about 170 metric tons per year for our entire 2023 fleet.

00:22:47:12 - 00:23:26:09
Gene Myers: And you see them crossing over in about 25 years. And I think that's an unusual and unusually long time frame, just because as a high performance builder, our operational carbon is much lower than a code built house would be. So typically you would see that cross over much sooner. And that's why a lot of the focus has been on operational carbon versus embodied carbon, on the theory that it never stops and that maybe over time embodied carbon is more to minimize.

00:23:26:10 - 00:23:54:14
Gene Myers: But that's really not true for a high performance builder. One way of looking at it is that our embodied carbon has a carbon debt of about 25 years, based on the operational carbon of the homes that we built. Now, we could do a carbon offset to offset this impact of our entire fleet.

00:23:54:16 - 00:24:26:24
Gene Myers: Green Builder Media has a great partner in carbon offsets of carbon credits with Senate. The current rate for metric ton of an offset is $12 a metric ton. So one way of looking at this is that for a total dollar volume in the 30 to $40 million range for 2023, we could offset the in total body embodied carbon for about $56,000.

00:24:26:26 - 00:24:55:10
Gene Myers: Now, if you're not familiar with what an offset is, it's really a certificate representing a project that is doing good for the environment, like maybe reforestation of those beetle killed for us, and they can sell that carbon benefit to people who have a carbon debt. And so that's that there is a worldwide carbon market for this. And that's the market that's nots in.

00:24:55:10 - 00:25:11:21
Gene Myers: And so if you have an interest in offsetting as their fate, buyer has an interest in offsetting their footprint for a house, you can go on to the court website and purchase a carbon offset.

00:25:11:24 - 00:25:40:28
Gene Myers: So where we had it, well, we did have a great vision home that we did with Green Builder Media in 2023 and with our Saunders project. This is the project that we did our very first carbon offset on and first carbon calculation on. I was taken aback when we did that bill of materials for this House. It has 19,000 pieces and parts.

00:25:41:00 - 00:26:07:20
Gene Myers: It's not realistic for the industry to really go to that level of detail on every home that we build. And so I really welcome the work that's being done by ResNet to come up with a simple embodied carbon index that can be included with every Herz rating.

00:26:07:22 - 00:26:47:22
Gene Myers: This next slide is of our Loretto Townhomes. These are geared towards first time homebuyers. This is that 14th Grand Award winner for housing innovation for best overall. We did purchase an offset for this townhome and which made this townhome carbon neutral. We have another project, Panorama House, up in Breckenridge, Colorado. We've experimented with using a fiberglass foundation, which has a much lower footprint than a concrete foundation.

00:26:47:24 - 00:27:04:22
Gene Myers: Concrete has like the biggest carbon debt of just about any material that we builders use. It features a double walls. We prefab roof trusses, wall panels, and floor cassettes on this house.

00:27:04:24 - 00:27:35:03
Gene Myers: The home is a net zero energy home. It's all electric, fire resilient. It's carbon neutral. So from an operational carbon standpoint, with net zero energy as a result of our onsite generation, that's kind of by definition. Operationally carbon neutral. And then we calculated the footprint on this with the help of my tech and purchased an offset through cNOT to make it carbon neutral.

00:27:35:05 - 00:27:58:14
Gene Myers: It is a dose zero energy ready home and also an EPA indoor air plus. So it's interesting we were building this house up in Breckenridge and not this past summer, but summer. Before last, I got a call from the Breckenridge chief Building official who wanted to come out and learn what we were doing.

00:27:58:16 - 00:28:26:20
Gene Myers: I then had an opportunity to present to the town of Breckenridge how we were reducing carbon, and I was asked if I thought we could actually do carbon neutral housing for a workforce housing project in the town of Breckenridge. This is a 61 unit project of single family duplex and triplex homes. They are net zero energy carbon neutral, Doe zero energy ready.

00:28:26:21 - 00:28:57:06
Gene Myers: And it is interesting on the carbon offset for this project that we discussed with the town, what we were doing with buying offsets. And what they've asked is that we calculate what that offset would cost and contribute that to a local carbon offset fund that they can use for expanding solar energy or whatever other carbon offsetting projects that they have locally.

00:28:57:06 - 00:29:40:24
Gene Myers: And I like that idea of local carbon offsets that are managed to the benefit of the local community. And I think it also has a lot of resonance with customers. We've just been selected for another Breckenridge project, about 150 units of single family duplex and triplex homes. Again, the goal is net zero energy carbon neutrality. And I should say that for Panorama House, for the stables project and for runway, if we can get to net zero energy and carbon neutrality and climate zone seven, which is the toughest climate zone in the continental US?

00:29:40:26 - 00:30:15:21
Gene Myers: I believe builders can do this anywhere. And so I honestly thought what I was going down the rabbit hole a little bit on what we could do for carbon reduction, that it could be years before we could monetize this for our business. And yet, I'm pleased to report that with stables and Runway, that we actually have business opportunities opening up to us because we are a builder that can help a municipality reach their climate action goals.

00:30:15:23 - 00:30:49:17
Gene Myers: And if you're a builder like us, we're always looking for those niches where we can play, where maybe the big builders don't play. And this has turned out to be an important opportunity for our company. I'd like to close out with a couple of slides. Some of you may have seen from some of our previous presentations, but this was just kind of a seminal moment for me in our decision to turn towards moving to carbon neutrality as a builder.

00:30:49:20 - 00:31:19:04
Gene Myers: The Marshall Fire was a disaster that happened basically in New Year's Day in 2022. This was a wildfire that that wiped out over a thousand homes in the Denver metro area here in Colorado were accustomed to wildfires, but they're supposed to be happening in the forest. They're not supposed to be happening where you have a fire hydrant in front of your house.

00:31:19:07 - 00:31:48:19
Gene Myers: And yet, because of climate change, one can wonder, is anywhere really safe? And I wonder if that's what people in the northeast are thinking right now, as the state of Massachusetts has fought over 500 wildfires in the month of October. And so as we were watching the news coverage of this.

00:31:48:21 - 00:32:04:29
Gene Myers: Someone in our company just took a picture of their TV screen. So I apologize for the poor quality of this photo, but our homes are the ones with the the white.

00:32:05:02 - 00:32:40:07
Gene Myers: The white gables. And you can see that the fire just stopped when it got to our our homes. We had about 30 homes in in the path of the Marshall Fire, and we didn't lose a single one. And so for me, it really answers the question, what can a small builder do in the face of climate change? Well, we're certainly not going to stop climate change, but maybe we can save someone's home or, you know, 20 of those homes are occupied.

00:32:40:07 - 00:33:06:08
Gene Myers: Maybe we can save someone's life. And at the end of the day, my conclusion was that at least on that day, the front line in the battle of climate against climate change was the center line of that street and our line held. And so if you're a builder wondering what you can do, well, if we can do it, anyone can do it.

00:33:06:11 - 00:33:38:16
Gene Myers: We're a small builder. We don't have an R&D department there. There was me and an intern wrote our ESG report, and now we're just using our Hers reports and our partners to help us calculate operational carbon, any body carbon. I hope as early as next year we'll need as a report to calculate both of them. I hope you'll ask yourself the question what can you do in the face of climate change?

00:33:38:18 - 00:33:49:20
Gene Myers: I hope this story will help you on your own journey and appreciate your attending today. And Mike, I'll turn this back to you.

00:33:49:23 - 00:34:10:28
Mike Collignon: Thank you very much, Jean. Appreciate it very much. And I put out the call in the chat for any questions that anybody might have for Jean. And a couple of people have sent sent some things in. I obviously have a question for you as well. Jean. And so with that I kind of want to dig in. I'll let our guests go first.

00:34:10:28 - 00:34:31:07
Mike Collignon: So the first question I've got is from Beau. Are you familiar? And I know that you are. But are you familiar or working with the passive House concept? So let's let's start there because you've got a couple different questions. So let's start there. Your comments on on passive House.

00:34:31:09 - 00:34:58:08
Gene Myers: Well it's interesting, I was sharing before the presentation with Mike and Mary that we're moving our office. And so we're in the middle of an office move. And I was packing things up and ran across my passive House consultant certification. And so yes, I am familiar with with passive House, and it mired the energy efficiency of passive houses.

00:34:58:09 - 00:35:13:22
Gene Myers: So I am familiar with it. And, you know, I'll just kind of give you the conclusion that as a production home builder, where we ended up on passive House.

00:35:13:25 - 00:35:42:23
Gene Myers: There's a like a tipping point in the energy efficiency of a home where you're spending more to gain additional energy efficiency than it would cost you just put another kilowatt of solar on the roof. And we found that that tipping point has been about a her's 40. And so an example would be that Panorama House without solar has or hers of 37.

00:35:42:25 - 00:36:10:14
Gene Myers: Now in our judgment, there was cheaper to just add the solar than it was to continue down the passive house route to get incrementally lower and lower energy usage. And so that's a value judgment that we've made of just optimizing the cost to get to zero. I hope that helps whoever asked that question.

00:36:10:16 - 00:36:43:10
Mike Collignon: Yeah. No, that's that's I appreciate the answer on that. And then the follow, not the follow up additional question was asked about, are you are you aware or familiar with or have you seen a certain type of concrete being used in North America yet? What type of concrete, you ask? Cement free alkali activated geo polymer concrete. Have you run across anything like that at all?

00:36:43:13 - 00:37:24:20
Gene Myers: I have well, I am aware of several efforts to reduce the embodied carbon of concrete. I'm not familiar with the geo polymer product that the questioner referred to. In many cases, what's being done is that the cement is being replaced by a byproduct, a manufacturing byproduct like fly ash from coal fired power plant. And I applaud all of the efforts to try to reduce the embodied carbon of of concrete.

00:37:24:20 - 00:37:54:14
Gene Myers: But at the end of the day, if we're relying on a fossil fuel power plant to produce a byproduct to help us lower the the carbon debt of concrete, it seems like there's kind of a problem with that. And so, again, I applaud all efforts being made. I will tell you that it's we could not obtain low carbon concrete in Breckenridge.

00:37:54:16 - 00:38:20:19
Gene Myers: There was no supplier for it. We talked with people in the metro area. They wouldn't deliver it. And so I hope that it becomes much more widespread and and, you know, any advances that can be made on reducing the footprint of concrete are huge for the for the future of carbon reduction in our industry.

00:38:20:22 - 00:38:38:14
Mike Collignon: All right. Had a question from Dale. Wanted to know if you could mention either the group or the professor at the University of Denver that helped with the initial embodied carbon accounting?

00:38:38:16 - 00:39:28:24
Gene Myers: I would love to. I'd like to do an advertisement for the. So the individual is Eric Holt. They call him a professor of the practice in the Burns Franklin Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management. They have been so generous and so committed to helping us on our journey of calculating embodied carbon. I really would refer you to the Green Builder Media website, where their study that they did a year or so ago for us is published for everyone to use, where they basically took the same house, ran it through, I believe, seven different carbon calculating platforms evaluated ease of use accuracy.

00:39:28:27 - 00:39:53:26
Gene Myers: And oh, by the way, I need to tell you that you can get wildly different conclusions from these different platforms, and it's kind of disheartening that we're not to the point where we can all agree on what yardstick to use to measure our progress. But at the end of the day, that's what I think the Hers Carbon Embodied Carbon Index is about.

00:39:53:28 - 00:40:24:05
Gene Myers: Again, you can get wildly variable results from different platforms. If we can just settle on a platform and then measure our performance against that as an index, I think it's a huge step forward for the industry. But my hat's off to Eric Holt and to his grad students that have helped us these last several years in calculating embodied carbon.

00:40:24:07 - 00:40:33:08
Mike Collignon: Bring a smile to your face, Jean. Our friend Mike is saying, hey, thanks for your inspiration and commitment. Get well soon.

00:40:33:10 - 00:40:35:26
Gene Myers: Thank you.

00:40:35:28 - 00:40:42:25
Mike Collignon: Question from Robert. He'd like to hear a little bit more about how the fiberglass foundation works.

00:40:42:27 - 00:40:48:11
Gene Myers: Well, it's really interesting. It's a proprietary system.

00:40:48:14 - 00:40:51:21
Gene Myers: You can Google.

00:40:51:23 - 00:41:10:09
Gene Myers: The epitome. That's epitome foundation system. And up will come a company in Wisconsin that fabricates it. It is a.

00:41:10:12 - 00:41:52:18
Gene Myers: Kind of a use of a product design for a different purpose. So there's this extrusion process in Elkhart, Indiana that has a fiberglass skin on both sides of an EPs foam panel, and you can almost think of it as a fiberglass sips panel. That continuously extruded panel is used in the recreational vehicle industry. And so they take that extrusion ship it up to their plan in Wisconsin, and they clue hollow fiberglass two by four stiffeners to that.

00:41:52:21 - 00:42:20:25
Gene Myers: So you end up with a panel that's about 2.5in thick of foam with fiber, rigid fiberglass on each side. The stiffness that's on 16 inch centers. In the case of Panorama House, we just put a typical our 19 bat into that cavity created in the stiffeners, and ended up with an hour 40 foundation wall assembly on that house.

00:42:20:25 - 00:42:39:13
Gene Myers: It's a stem wall for a crawl space. And in climate zone seven, you want that to be insulated? Well, it's inherently airtight. It's waterproof and went in about two days.

00:42:39:15 - 00:43:05:24
Gene Myers: I will tell you if any story. Building inspector came out to do the inspection on the foundation. He comes out, he kind of gets out of his pickup, he goes into our construction trailer, looks at the plans, gets his clipboard out, walks about, get back out the door, stands up and looks at our foundation, turns to me and says, I have no idea what I'm looking at.

00:43:05:26 - 00:43:28:17
Gene Myers: And so we went back into the trailer and there were a lot of references on the notes to install per manufacturer's recommendation. So how do I know you did that? And I said, well, the manufacturers right outside, why don't you go ask them? So I was super happy that the people from epitome came out to to install that.

00:43:28:17 - 00:43:55:09
Gene Myers: And I think that, you know, with any new innovation, you end up needing to get on an educational process with your consultants. And that structural engineer had to get comfortable with it, with the building inspectors. And and yet I do think that's how we move the industry forward. I would do that foundation again.

00:43:55:12 - 00:44:09:03
Mike Collignon: Another question from Bo. Our bio based installation materials such as Hemp Crete. Are they catching on at all? Are they becoming easier to acquire obtain?

00:44:09:05 - 00:44:20:28
Gene Myers: Well, I don't have a lot of direct experience with it. I was out of Penn State a couple of weeks ago where they've done a lot of work with him. Crete.

00:44:21:00 - 00:44:57:29
Gene Myers: And with him insulation. What we chose to use on Panorama House is a blown fiberglass. We use the Owens Corning product because they did the biggest power purchase agreement, at least in history at the time, and they've offset the emissions associated with all of their fiberglass production in North America. And so without having to find a different supplier, a develop a different supply chain.

00:44:58:01 - 00:45:14:13
Gene Myers: Again, get on that educational curve with with inspectors and subcontractors and so on. We're able to get a very low footprint product using a very conventional material.

00:45:14:15 - 00:45:42:18
Mike Collignon: Gotcha. All right. I'm going to ask you a question, Jean, because I'm curious. And I love when we have our conversations and the insight you share. And I'll give you a moment to also let the rest of you you cited early in the presentation, you cited agreements and resolutions. Ordinances have been passed or approved by 400 and some mayors or entities.

00:45:42:20 - 00:46:14:01
Mike Collignon: And I think that's created some strong commitment to sustainability. But it also has created a bit of a patchwork for an entity like a national homebuilder, with the short term outlook seemingly de-emphasizing sustainability at the national level. Is there anything in your mind, Jean, to motivate national builders to do this type of self-examination?

00:46:14:04 - 00:46:42:21
Gene Myers: Well, I think your observation is correct, Mike. And we deal with the patchwork problem all the time here in Colorado. We don't even have a statewide building code. All we have to do is cross a city limit line, and we could be working on the 2021 code, or even as far back as a 2015 code. And so this patchwork is a problem even for a small builder like us.

00:46:42:23 - 00:47:15:10
Gene Myers: And but as you asked the question about a national builder, I've never worked for a national builder, but I know a lot of them. And it does strike me that their division presidents, their regional presidents have a lot of autonomy. And I know that some builders that may be based here in Denver and operate in California, they may have a division president in California that is is very progressive.

00:47:15:15 - 00:47:21:28
Gene Myers: And why would that happen? I think it happens because.

00:47:22:01 - 00:48:01:10
Gene Myers: This is actually a local business. Our customers are hyper local. Even our economics, if you're building in California, where there may be a solar mandate or other, I think it's called title 24 requirements. You can't be just like every other division in your in your national building company. And so I think the motivation would be to drive locally and regionally on what the customer expects and what's appropriate for, for their market.

00:48:01:13 - 00:48:39:18
Gene Myers: I would like to say, and I'm not sure what I'm about to say is true, but I would like to say that there is brand building potential for any builder who would adopt these kind of standards. And a person who comes to mind is Jacob Atalla at KB home. I have great respect for Jacob, and he was able to get Energy Star as a standard nationwide for their company, and it's not a patchwork within their company.

00:48:39:18 - 00:49:19:00
Gene Myers: I think within a lot of national builders, each region is kind of a patchwork, or each division president is kind of a patchwork. And so I admire these national builders that will look at the situation and say, this is the right thing to do. We're seeing more and more of that. At the last IBA summit in October, Joel Abney from Woodside Homes came over to me and said, you know, I think in this room there, representatives of builders that build 300,000 homes a year that are here to learn how to build high performance homes better.

00:49:19:02 - 00:49:51:12
Gene Myers: And those included, D.R. Horton was in the room, Pulte was in the room, Beazer was in the room, Taylor Morrison was in the room. And so even though I think it presents a big challenge, Mike, with this patchwork and it would be a lot better with a consistent federal policy. There are big national builders that are focusing on this, and I look forward to their continued adoption of high performance building practices.

00:49:51:14 - 00:50:16:06
Gene Myers: I think the 45 L tax credit had a lot to do with the interest that we saw this past year at the EBA summit in the big builders, and I'm I'm hopeful that that that tax credit will remain in place. I believe it in the legislation. It has a life of ten years. And so we'll just have to see how durable that is.

00:50:16:09 - 00:50:39:21
Mike Collignon: Yeah, we will see how long that survives. If it makes it all the way to the ten year mark or something else happens in the interim. But Tiffany wanted to make sure to share with you. Jean that obviously her thanks, but also that the Lower Sioux tribe in Minnesota, they've done a lot of work to grow and process hemp so they can build with it.

00:50:39:24 - 00:50:58:07
Mike Collignon: And she's a proponent of using it as a building material because it is naturally moisture, insect and fire resistant. So just a quick plug for for hemp as a potential building material. So I wanted to share that with you.

00:50:58:10 - 00:51:20:22
Gene Myers: And I think the embodied carbon calculation, that would be pretty interesting because it's probably embodied carbon positive that could be utilized to actually offset the footprint of some of your other materials. So I think there is great potential in these innovative products.

00:51:20:25 - 00:51:46:27
Mike Collignon: Yeah, I agree, I agree. Well, I don't have any other questions or compliments for Eugene other than it's always good to hang out with you. We really do appreciate you being here. Thank you for sharing some time and insight with us and stretching your voice to the limits. We do very much appreciate the weathering through this, and we hope that the move goes well here real soon.

00:51:47:00 - 00:51:53:13
Gene Myers: Mike, I appreciate you guys at Green Builder and thank you for all you do for the industry.

00:51:53:15 - 00:52:13:04
Mike Collignon: Well, we try we try our best. And so thankfully we get to work with people like you and that makes it a lot easier. But we also get to hang out with this wonderful audience. Thank all of you for attending and asking the wonderful questions that you do. And we very much do appreciate the compliments that you send our way.

00:52:13:04 - 00:52:40:17
Mike Collignon: And thank you once again to Schneider Electric, Panasonic Healthy Indoor Living Solutions, Genco Solar and LG vac for their sponsorships. All right. We have one final webinar in 2024. Cue the trumpets. It is the annual state of the industry event, with Green Builder Media CEO Sarah Gutmann that is going to take place on Wednesday, December 4th at our usual start time of 2 p.m. eastern.

00:52:40:19 - 00:53:06:05
Mike Collignon: I will be joining her to host that, but she will be the one with all the wonderful insights and information, so please make sure you register for that. Again, that is just two weeks away. Thanks again for attending and I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving next week. And if you're not located in the US, then enjoy a random weekday with American football games played all day long I guess.

00:53:06:07 - 00:53:10:02
Mike Collignon: Regardless. Stay safe, stay healthy and take care everyone so long.