New Orleans Louisiana Real Estate and Community Blog 

Over the past six months I’ve begun to immerse myself in green building technologies, practices and certifications. Already I’ve become NAR Green Certified and am in the process of becoming a Certified Green Verifier through the New Orleans Home Builder’s Association.

Nationally, there are currently four different ‘green’ certifications and/or guidelines a home can obtain – ENERY STAR, LEED for Homes, NAHB Green and Builder’s Challenge. All have their own rating system, guidelines and certifications. (See my earlier BLOG for a summary of these programs. But I’ll focus on ENERGY STAR in more detail here.

ENERGY STAR is a federal program under the EPA designed to promote energy efficiency within a home. Most people have heard of ENERGY STAR as it relates to purchasing energy efficient appliances. This is just one aspect of what ENERGY STAR promotes since they want to focus the home owner on the energy efficiency of the entire home.

To earn the ENERGY STAR rating, a home must be at least 15% more energy efficient than homes built to the current International Residential Code (IRC) and include other energy efficiency features that often make a home 20-30% more efficient than a standard home. Some of these other features include:

• Effective insulation
• High-performance windows
• Tight construction and ducts
• Efficient heating and cooling equipment

To obtain ENERGY STAR certification, you need to meet a set list of requirements which must then be verified by a third party verifier to obtain the certification. Either you pass by meeting the requirements or its back to the drawing board. This certification approach is unlike some of the other ‘green’ certifications whereby the builder can choose from a much longer list of ‘green’ attributes to potentially build into a home. Builders then decide which ‘green’ attributes to add and not add to the home as they work their way to achieving an overall minimum score for a specific certification. (These ‘green’ features too must be reviewed by a third party verifier.)

One other difference between ENERGY STAR and other ‘green’ certifications is that ENERGY STAR currently only focuses on energy efficiency within the home and not other ‘green’ areas such as water usage, site selection and build, and overall indoor air quality.

But with rising energy costs and the homebuyer’s interest in supporting the environment, there is no doubt there is a growing interest in ‘green’ building and related certifications. Each certification can be helpful in marketing and selling the home by giving a potential buyer an understanding of how efficient and ‘green’ friendly a home is as compared to the other available homes currently on the market.

Check out www.energystar.gov for more information, including tax credits homeowners may be eligible for given potential energy efficient renovations they’ve done to their home. Also check out www.entergy-neworleans.com/energy_efficiency for a list of energy verifiers in our area and for information on other ways to save on your energy bill.

I’d love to hear your comments on this blog! Feel free to contact me also with questions call me at 985-707-5035 or email me a pbennett@latterblum.com. Let’s get you moving! Anywhere in the country, I can get you there.

Posted by:Patricia Bennett