Green Building Law Blog : Green Building Lawyer & Attorney : Shari Shapiro: Calliope Communications, LLC

Today, the American National Standards Institute approved the National Association of Home Builders' green residential home standard. 

According to Ron Jones, the head of the committe which developed the standard.

The National Green Building Standard is now the first and only green building rating system approved by ANSI, making it the benchmark for green homes

The 2008 draft standard is available here

A comparison of LEED for Homes and NAHB Green is available here

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In my post about my experiences at Greenbuild, I blogged:

NAHB is going after LEED-H in a big way. A new, more robust NAHB green standard for residential should be out shortly which will give LEED-H a run for its money.

At Greenbuild I spent a long time talking to representatives of the National Association of Home Builders, NAHB, about their standard for green residential home building--NAHBGreen.  NAHBGreen competes directly with the USGBC's newly minted LEED product for residential buildings, LEED For Homes or LEED-H.

Both programs have a similar structure.  Both programs have a point based system which allocates points for site selection, resource conservation, energy efficiency, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality and homeowner education. 

As currently developed, residential buildings following LEED-H will probably be "greener."  LEED-H has a component for "Location and Linkages", which includes proximity to transit, infill development, adjacency to open space and access to community resources like shopping, etc. LEED-H has prerequisites which mandate minimum requirements for durability, material efficiency, erosion controls and other components. 

However, in talking with the NAHB representatives at Greenbuild, I found out that NAHB is doing several things to enhance the NAHBGreen product.  They are working with ANSI the standards body, to certify the NAHBGreen standard.  The ANSI-certified new NAHB standard is going to have stricter requirements for energy efficiency and other green components.  Finally, the registration and verification cost for becoming NAHBGreen certified will be much less than LEED-H.  In short, the new NAHBGreen is seeking to compete with LEED-H both on quality and on price. 

It remains to be seen what the new NAHBGreen will look like, but if it is equally robust and at a lower cost, it will likely give LEED-H a run for its money.
 

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