Frontlines of Climate Action: Sustainability is Personal

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Sara Gutterman: I am Sarah Gutman. I'm the CEO of Green Builder Media, and I'm here with one of my favorite people in the building industry, Gene Myers, who is the founder, chief sustainability officer and chairman of Thrive Homebuilders Hygiene.

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Gene Myers: Well hi, Sarah. You're one of my favorite people in the building industry, too.

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Sara Gutterman: Well, Gene, you have been possibly the leading green builder for at least the last decade. People watch what you do. They emulate what they do. They want to do what you and thrive homebuilders are doing. So I want to hear all about that. But first, Gene, tell us your origin story. How'd you even get into green building?

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Gene Myers: Well, I'm a civil engineer by training and actually got into the industry through land development. And for old people who are in the audience will remember a thing called the savings and loan crisis. And in the middle of that, we ended up with a bunch of lots and no builders. And so we became a homebuilding company back then, and I went out on my own then in 1992, and my first name of my company was Green Tree Homes.

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Gene Myers: Before anyone knew what I was talking about for green. And I guess that was 32 years ago. And so we've been on the journey consistently for all of those 32 years. And I tell people we've made all the mistakes. And so that's why we we've come a long way because of that consistent effort. And, you know, it was interesting.

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Gene Myers: I was talking with someone and they were asking a similar question, and they said, well, you know what? It's a huge advantage to be a private builder because you can stay on that track. And it was like a light bulb went off all these years. I thought as a small private builder, we were the underdog the whole time.

00:01:59:27 - 00:02:20:28
Gene Myers: But it really has been a great blessing, I think, to be able to say, well, this is the right thing to do and to be able to just stick with it for that period of time. And I think there are a lot of really good people in the industry, but their their companies haven't given them that kind of opportunity.

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Gene Myers: So it's been an interesting ride all those years.

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Sara Gutterman: Well, you have seen so much change and transformation in the built environment. What are the biggest changes that you've seen in the past three decades since you have been a green builder?

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Gene Myers: Well, I think the programs have really changed. You know, we started off in a utility program for the old Public Service Company of Colorado, and it was really not a very rigorous program, but and then that grew into a local HBA program that was called Bill green, Colorado. And that was a, relatively speaking, a pretty rigorous program. But because it was an HBA thing, there was some pressure from the industry to maybe not advance very much.

00:03:14:27 - 00:03:45:27
Gene Myers: And building codes eventually almost overtook that whole program. And so we started to turn our sights towards the federal programs, energy serving the first one. And we, as you know, we got into a really big master plan community, the redevelopment of the old airport in Denver. And that developer really funded some technical assistance for all the builders to step up to Energy Star.

00:03:45:29 - 00:04:19:04
Gene Myers: And so that's how we got into that program. And then as you know, that just evolved, you know, version one, version two, version 33.10. You know, all along the way. And eventually we stepped into the Doe Zero Energy Ready Home program. And I really like that one because it wasn't purely energy efficiency. It was sort of the best of EPA indoor air, plus best of EPA water sentence and Best of Energy Star.

00:04:19:06 - 00:04:55:18
Gene Myers: And so we remain in that program. And I have to tell you that that that helped that we we got the technical help, the camaraderie from the other builders in the program. IBA, as you know, has been a convener of builders like us for the for over 25 years. And so those those were kind of the vehicles that helped a small builder that, you know, we don't have R&D and we're not experts, we're home builders.

00:04:55:18 - 00:05:30:03
Gene Myers: And and so it was really great to be able to access a community of people that we're really trying to raise the bar every year. And that made it fun. So we weren't just stamping out the same houses year after year. We were always evolving and always improving. And I think that's been maybe one of the biggest factors to enable us to kind of stay at the front of the pack for a long time in the business.

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Sara Gutterman: What are some of the sustainability, sustainability related products and technologies that you are most excited about today?

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Gene Myers: Well, you know, I think just looking back over that certain years, I don't think it would have even occurred to me that we could be building net zero energy, carbon neutral homes that people would buy in my career, during my career. And so people they kind of dis home building as being this archaic industry that never evolves and never, never improves.

00:06:11:29 - 00:06:38:22
Gene Myers: And that has not been my experience. My experience is that there's always been advancement. And the advancement came a lot of times through codes, a lot of times through the federal programs, the national labs, sometimes through manufacturers. You know, those guys do have R&D. They are out there really leading the way and proving particularly HVAC and products like that.

00:06:38:24 - 00:07:13:03
Gene Myers: And so to have kind of been able to have a front row seat with all of those stakeholders has been incredible. And so I you know, as I look back, I think Rose top solar has to be the number one thing because that's how we get to net zero energy. And I remember when we first started doing rooftop solar and there were so many naysayers about, well, you think it's good for the environment, but you know, all those materials that are going in, those are really terrible.

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Gene Myers: And then I heard the exact same thing when electric vehicles started to get traction. But at the end of the day, all these things are leaps and.

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Gene Myers: Yeah, I think they're right. Now we're in a moment in the government where, well, you know, the government needs to get out of the way and get rid of the subsidies and all that. The rapid adoption and lowering of cost of rooftop solar was a direct result of the rebate. Programs that happened to be able to scale the business up, to be able to make it cost effective without support, which is really where we are now for the ability to build a net zero energy house.

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Gene Myers: And so I think that's like would have to raise to the top for me. And then all of the stuff that has to go on, you know, you don't want to just go slap solar on a bad house. And so the not the stuff that's maybe invisible to most of the.

00:08:20:22 - 00:08:44:28
Gene Myers: Most consumers, definitely. But maybe another big leap, which isn't a product, but it was the her software to actually be able, for a builder like us, to be able to do a pretty accurate energy model. And, you know, I've had my squabbles about how accurate is that? And, you know, what do you mean? We can't even agree on the yardstick.

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Gene Myers: But at the end of the day, I think we're going to approach 2 million homes that have have been rated through ResNet, and that's made a huge impact on the industry. And so the ability of a small builder to tap into a network of raiders that are trained, that are generally high ethical standards, so that the rating means something, I would have to say that has been a big leap.

00:09:18:04 - 00:09:41:02
Gene Myers: It's not really a product, but it was a capability that they didn't exist when I started. And so now it just kind of goes without saying, oh yeah, well, of course we'll get an energy rating, and of course we'll know how this house is going to perform before we build it. And I think that was a pretty big breakthrough indeed.

00:09:41:04 - 00:10:24:01
Sara Gutterman: There's so much that you can do in terms of enhancement and just performance analysis, when you can monitor and measure energy use and the foreman's. So along those lines, we are seeing the conversation in the building industry shift from net zero energy to net zero carbon. And speaking of hers raters, we're going to see the ANC standard 1550 come out that streamlines the measurement of embodied carbon, where ers, raiders and energy raters can actually also not just measure energy but also measure embodied carbon.

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Sara Gutterman: And you, Jean and thrive homebuilders are one of the first builders in the country to purchase carbon offsets so that you can deliver net zero embodied carbon to your buyers. What's motivate? What is motivating you to take that step?

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Gene Myers: Well, let me back up just a little bit. You've been on the front line of that effort to and I found myself backsliding to my critical nature about the her software. You know, we had done a house and run it through b opt and hers and the passive house software and got no correlation between the three. And it was so frustrating.

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Gene Myers: And I as an engineer, I thought we should nail this and we should be really accurate. And I was looking at the methodology for the new standard and it's not going to be super accurate. You know, we've been counting every piece and part and then adding up all this, the footprint of each piece and part to get to an embodied carbon measurement for houses.

00:11:31:23 - 00:12:13:25
Gene Myers: This house I'm sitting in right now. But it took a lot of effort to do that. And I think the new Ansi standard is so critical because if it remains as tedious and difficult in the future as it has been up to now to calculate a carbon footprint, no one will do it. And so broad adoption of an awareness of what the carbon impact of homes really is, really necessitates a standard like that, and a simple benchmarking that an existing infrastructure of raiders can do for builders.

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Gene Myers: And so I am 100% behind what's happening. And I love the work you've done, the RMI work, the ResNet work, and really applaud what's happening and where it's going. And so but now I'll answer your question why? And I think the why doesn't the why always end up being something really personal? I love Colorado and I've watched the lodgepole forest die and I, you know, you go over Wolf Creek Pass and you can watch the spruce die.

00:13:01:08 - 00:13:32:16
Gene Myers: And I was over at Black Canyon National Park, and I was watching Gamble Oak die. And climate change is happening. And, you know, we can make it political and argue about it. And we can elect one president one time and another president another, and policy's going to sway maybe wildly. But what's not going to change is the climate change that we're watching before our eyes.

00:13:32:16 - 00:13:54:10
Gene Myers: And over my lifetime and over my career, and I'm an avid backpacker, and it grieves me to really see what we've done to the planet. And so what can one builder really do about that? Well, we're not going to we're not going to solve that. But we can point the way of how we all could do our part.

00:13:54:10 - 00:14:30:05
Gene Myers: And I really think that that's what we're called to do is what we can do. We're not I don't sweat too much what we can't do, but we can build a carbon neutral house. And oh, by the way, it's probably the most resource intensive and carbon intensive product that a consumer buys. And we're in an industry that accounts I've seen also widely varying estimates, but somewhere between 15 and 30% of emissions are coming from our industry or related industry, the built environment.

00:14:30:07 - 00:15:06:12
Gene Myers: And so we can't address that if our industry isn't doing our part. And so the wine for me was, well, if we can we should. And so we just started working on first operational carbon. And now for a net zero energy builder. That's that's a pretty easy lift. If we're producing our our energy on our rooftop with solar, it means that from an operational standpoint, we're not burning fossil fuels to heat and cool our houses.

00:15:06:12 - 00:15:36:25
Gene Myers: And so the operational carbon was an easy lift. And and for the people who are watching this video, that standard is already in place with every Hirsch rating in the country is the Hirsch Carbon Index. That is an operational carbon index. And then the next question was, well, what is the footprint of the actual home we build? And and so we embarked on how to go about that.

00:15:36:25 - 00:16:05:04
Gene Myers: And it's been a really interesting and compelling journey, and I'm really glad we're not going to have to go through all that at once. This new Ansi standard is in place, but it really gives us insight into the decisions that we make on the products we pick and, and the technologies we utilize. And, you know, I'm I'm sitting in a house with a fiberglass foundation because concrete's bad.

00:16:05:07 - 00:16:29:19
Gene Myers: And and so I think that that's the why is we want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And, you know, when I first started off, I had the same feeling. And back then it was about smart growth. And everybody on the front Range of Colorado was really down on growth because of the growth impacts and urban sprawl and all of those things.

00:16:29:19 - 00:16:57:27
Gene Myers: You don't hear much about that and more, but I wanted our homes and neighborhoods to be an asset, not a liability to the communities where we were located. And that's remained a constant. I want our homes to be an asset to our communities, to the people who live in them. That's why we we jumped on to the health focus is what could be more viscerally important for our customers than in their own health, living in our homes.

00:16:57:27 - 00:17:21:17
Gene Myers: And and so that's kind of the why. And we want to be part of the solution that's not going to go away with the election of president. This is going to be the rest of my life, in your life. And now all the people who watch this video, it's going to be the challenge that they need to figure out how to face.

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Gene Myers: And I would challenge everybody, don't sweat what you can't do, but let's do all we can.

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Sara Gutterman: Wise words indeed. So my final question for you is when you look ahead and you perceive homes of the future in the next ten, 20 years, what do those homes and communities look like?

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Gene Myers: Well.

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Gene Myers: I'll be honest with you, I.

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Gene Myers: I'm not a futurist in the sense of it's all going to be wildly different. I'm not so sure it will be wildly different looking, because I think we humans, we Americans, we we we have this thing in our DNA about what home is and what a neighborhood is. And yes, we may move to more dense living and and yes, we may nibble around the edges to the style of communities, but I really believe that they will be so much smarter and so much have a much lighter footprint than the neighborhoods that that we built back when I first started.

00:18:34:06 - 00:19:02:01
Gene Myers: And, you know, and so I think we'll see a lot of on site generation. And I don't know if it'll be the solar panels that we're attaching to roofs today, but that trend is not going away. We're going to be generating our own power, and we're going to be doing in a way that's not only a little bit independent of the grid, but is more it is adding resilience to the grid.

00:19:02:04 - 00:19:18:03
Gene Myers: I think we'll see greener materials. And I mentioned the fiberglass foundation. I don't know if that'll take over the world, but I think innovation in the products and the materials that we use to build houses.

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Gene Myers: Will happen, needs to happen, will continue to happen. And I think we'll see that, you know, I hope there's a day when we're generating solar off of the reflectivity of our windows. And we don't we're not even attaching anything to the roof. And I think that technology has been around for a while, but it has not really happened to scale at a, at a price that we can actually do that.

00:19:44:02 - 00:20:04:28
Gene Myers: I think we'll see a lot more subtlety. You know, I, I remember there was a street lighting requirement in Castle Rock where we first started that the streets look like runways. You know, they were so lit up and up here in Summit County where we have.

00:20:05:01 - 00:20:42:07
Gene Myers: Lighting requirements, that everything is way more subtle so that we can see the night sky and we can really enjoy the environment. We're in 24 hours a day. I think we'll see a lot more of that kind of sensitivity in in our neighborhoods. One wonders what the future of the car is. I don't think that anytime soon we're going to want to give up individual mobility, but I wonder if we really will end up having so many cars and, you know, big three car garage that are dominating the look of our communities.

00:20:42:09 - 00:21:12:12
Gene Myers: So I would imagine that there'll be a advances in in mobility. But at the end of the day, the difference that I hope that we have and it won't be obvious to the naked eye, but I hope that all those houses are carbon neutral, that we are treading more lightly on the environment, that you are protecting, this environment that we love, and not only as a necessity for our own health and prosperity.

00:21:12:12 - 00:21:39:12
Gene Myers: But there's something about I know where you live and you know where I live, and we live in these places because they somehow they make us better people. And I would hope that future neighborhoods do that for the people who live there, that they're they're healthier, they're happier, they're they're enriched by the place where they live and the home where they live.

00:21:39:15 - 00:21:49:21
Gene Myers: Their healthier because we're building better homes. And as I say, they're just assets to the to the communities where they are.

00:21:49:24 - 00:22:05:04
Sara Gutterman: Well, Jean, thank you so much for sharing your time and your wise insights today. Thank you also for your leadership and for your vision. Certainly, you are a beacon that many of us follow in the industry and.

00:22:05:05 - 00:22:07:22
Gene Myers: Well, congratulations on 20 years.

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Sara Gutterman: Well thank you.

00:22:08:28 - 00:22:09:28
Gene Myers: You're out there too.

00:22:09:29 - 00:22:12:24
Gene Myers: People are obviously following you too. And so.

00:22:12:24 - 00:22:31:20
Gene Myers: Thank you for that. I've always felt like, as you know, we have a voice that reaches over different beauty. And I always say, if we want to preach to the, the, the choir, the believers, we need to talk to Sarah and get the word out, because that's who you are. You're really the voice of the kind of builder we are.

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Gene Myers: And I'm so glad that you're you're out there in this ever challenging and changing media landscape. And congratulations about 20 years.

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Sara Gutterman: Well, thank you, Jim. And again, thank you for being a North Star in our industry. Certainly you paved the way for many, many other builders.