Two small-business owners working in the homebuilding and remodeling industry recently became the first Certified Green Professionals (CPG) in Rhode Island – a designation created as part of a push to develop new environmental standards for the housing industry.
Joseph Cracco, owner of Modern Yankee Builders, a residential design and construction firm in Cumberland, and Daniel Paquette, of DJP Consulting in Newport, earned the “green” professional certification last month from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the industry’s national trade group.
The NAHB unveiled the certification early this year, as part of an effort to develop its own nationally accepted benchmarks for environmentally-friendly home building and remodeling techniques, said Roger Warren, executive director of the Rhode Island Builders Association.
“It was created in response to the movement, if you will, towards sustainable building in residential construction,” Warren said. “They’re trying to get the industry to understand that you can build a lot more efficiently without a lot more cost, if any.”
The certification can be obtained by homebuilders and remodelers with two years of industry experience who attend a two-day green building course and a one-day business management course. It is designed to help builders reduce the environmental impact of their projects by incorporating appropriate green practices into their work, he said.
In addition to the new green professional certification, NAHB has also drafted green homebuilding guidelines that lead to certifications for projects that include design features for energy efficiency, water conservation, improved indoor-air quality and overall sustainability.
The NAHB intends its National Green Building Program as a cheaper alternative to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, a certification program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council that offers the most widely accepted green standards for the industry.
A third green standard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, has not been as widely adopted.
The NAHB’s rating system is similar to the LEED program, offering a few levels of green certification based on a score produced from a long checklist of construction materials, building design and business practices.
But the NAHB guidelines, which were developed by builders sensitive to the pressures facing the small-volume residential construction industry, is less prescriptive than the LEED program and also significantly cheaper, Warren said.
The NAHB certification will cost about $400 per project. In contrast, a LEEDS certification typically costs more than $2,000, Cracco said.
“The big difference is the effort it takes to get a LEEDS certification,” Cracco said. “It’s a very time-consuming and very financially exhausting process, whereas NAHB’s guidelines were set up specifically to combat that.”
The Rhode Island Builders Association recently formed a green building committee charged with determining whether it should adopt the NAHB’s green-building program guidelines, and with developing a professional education program to implement the new guidelines, Warren said.
The chairman of the committee is DJP Consulting’s Paquette.
Promoting new, voluntary green standards for industry in the state should not be too hard to achieve, because homebuilders and remodelers in Rhode Island are already required by state law to use many of the practices called for in the NAHB guidelines, Warren said.
“We may be well on our way,” he said. “When you look at some of the requirements [of the NAHB guidelines], you have low-flow water fixtures and toilets, high-efficiency windows – those kinds of things are already in the code.”
The NAHB’s effort to create its own environmental standards comes as the U.S. Green Building Council expands its LEED program to certify home remodeling projects and other projects that were not previously covered by the program.
The organizations are competing to create a dominant, nationally accepted program to meet new government building requirements and court environmentally conscious consumers facing skyrocketing energy costs.
In Narragansett, contractors are about two months away from completing a new home construction that is expected to become the first residential property in Rhode Island to receive the LEED gold standard. •
