Green Pork

Whether or not you agree with the bailout package signed into law this week by President Bush after overwhelming support from the Senate and better-late-than-never support from the House, you might be happy to know that some of the pork thrown into it includes what some are saying is the largest renewable energy legislation in history. EcoGeek.com reports that this new legislation will create as many as 440,000 permanent jobs in the solar sector, 35 gigawatts of renewable electricity, and foster the growth of a $300 billion market for solar energy.

The bill extends for 8 years the 30% tax credit for rsidential and commercial solar installations, and it eliminates the $2,000 monetary cap for residential solar electric installations. It also authorizes $800 million for clean energy bonds for renewable energy generating facilities, including solar.

Al Gore and the rest at Generation Investment Management must be having quite a laugh. Could this financial bailout help leverage us into a green future?

(Note: In the middle of September, Generation did their small part to help the banking industry by investing close to $14 million in New Resource Bank, an innovative bank that seeks to deliver a new standard of customer service while building sustainable resources. This second equity offering expanded the bank's equity capital base by more than 75%. For more go to generationim.com.)

Briar Chapel Grand Opening

There is something new on the market and it's really green. On Saturday, Newland Communities unveiled the community that Chatham County, North Carolina, has been anticipating for years. Briar Chapel, a 1600-acre new-home community just outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has been intentionally designed to inhabit the land without inhibiting its true nature. Nine hundred of the 1600 acres will be left as open space with extensve trails, natural woodlands and creeks, and all homes will be built to Green Buiding Initiative standards.

"We are proud of the established and high quality builder team at Briar Chapel. We were diligent in our selection of builders with high standards and a focus on building sustainable, environmentally responsible homes," said Mitch Barron, vice president of operations for Newland Communities. "These builders will help us realize our responsibility to make Briar Chapel an enduring and healthy community and ensure Briar Chapel is on the forefront of the Triangle's green communities."

The list of amenities is a panacea for the environmentally conscious home seekers and and a real find as well for those simply looking for a village of charming and inviting neighborhoods. Consider:

• Residents club within walking distance: gathering rooms, fitness facility, catering kitchen, numerous outdoor entertainment areas, two pools, cabanas, basketball and tennis courts
• Community park with soccer, football and baseball fields
• Numerous neighborhood parks, natural sanctuaries and open spaces
• Extensive greenway system with nature trails, mountain bike trails, boardwalks, and paved paths
• Natural amphitheatre
• Amenity programming: Environmental education, Historical education, Health and wellness, Local arts and culture, Green Living lending library
• Woods Charter School on site
• Site for county middle school
• Village civic center with proposed civic buildings, restaurant and retail space, recreational areas, and office space

Right now, home prices range from the low $200,000s to the high $600,000s. Custom homes are offered by a select group of local custom builders who make up the Chatham Builder Guild. If you're in the market, discount pricing will be in effect on many homes during the Parade of Homes through the end of October. For more information, call 919-538-6491.

Who knows?

There has been speculation about which economist or econometrics firm would be the first to forecast a possible turnaround of the current housing downswing. Without surprise, it came from David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, interpreter of the building industry's crystal ball. The other contender was Lawrence Yun who holds the same title at the National Association of Realtors; unfortunately Yun's credibility, challenged daily by a blog called Lawrence Yun Watch, is successor to David Lereah, the NAR economist who embarrassingly had to issue a Reality Check on the prospect of a housing bubble in August of 2006. Yun was his Managing Director of Quantitative Research at the time

Seiders, whose credibility and track record hold up pretty well in spite of his industry bias, said recently that he expects the industry to bottom out in the first quarter of next year and for the industry to turn around in the remainder of 2008. He sites a healthy economy, decent job growth, controlled inflation, and favorable Federal Reserve activity as reasons for cautious mid-term optimism.

Veros Real Estate Solutions, a predictive technology software firm, released its latest quarterly forecast results for the third quarter of 2007 through the second quarter of 2008. In it, Veros names the 5 best and 5 worst housing markets in the US based in terms of growth. You ready?

Top 5 Strongest Markets:

1. Raleigh-Cary
   
2. Austin-Round Rock
   
3. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord
   
4. Salt Lake City
   
5. Albuguerque
   

Top 5 Weakest Markets:

1. Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville
   
2. Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville
   
3. Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice
   
4. Cape Coral-Fort Meyers
   
5. Riverside-San Bernardino
   

Way to go, North Carolina: 2 in the Top 5 Strongest.

It's still anybody's guess how long home buyers will remain jittery. We're in a small pond where the ripple effect is occurring, where homeowners were hit first and then lenders, banks, investors, regulators and legislators. When the ripples hit the edge of the pond and start to come back on themselves, we begin to see solutions and things start to settle down again.

When this will start happening is anyone's guess, including Seiders. As Patrick Moynihan once said, "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts." When more economists chime in, and the further they are from Washington, the facts will become stronger than the opinions and we'll begin to have a clearer idea of when this thing will turn around. When will it happen? Who knows.

Green Energy at the China Price

Any face time with Tom Friedman is time well spent. Here's a little with him as he speaks about the power of green.

Green Building Initiative

The Home Builders Association of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties announced their Green Building Initiaive this week. This press release will give you an idea of what green building is and the different approaches that can be taken:


HBA-DOC Announces Green Building Program

Durham (Novemeber 2, 2006) - Today the Home Builders Association (HBA) of Durham, Orange and Chatham counties unveiled a new voluntary residential green building program called the Green Building Initiative of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties. This new program is designed to encourage the building of homes that are more energy-efficient, healthier, and environmentally sustainable. These green homes can create thousands of dollars in utility savings for the average homeowner over the life of their mortgage.

The program, which is based on the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) Model Green Home Building Guidelines, is designed to offer local builders information on products and building practices to help meet the demand and diverse needs of the growing number of homebuyers seeking green homes.

"We learned during our Green Home Tour in the spring that consumers are more than just curious," says Nick Tennyson, executive vice president of the HBA. "Many buyers seem to be making serious decisions based on the green methods used in the construction of these homes."

The HBA of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties will officially launch their local Green Building Initiative program to the public at a special event on Thursday, Novemeber 2, 2006. The event will include a press conference and tour of the first home certified to the local Green Building Initiative guidelines.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to green building. The voluntary Green Building Initiative guidelines provide area builders with a tool kit for practical ways to approach green building that are applicable to the geography and climate of Durham, Orange and Chatham counties.

"We've gotten a larger-than-expected response from our membership," says Tennyson. "Many of our builders know that the consumer interest in green building is increasing, and they want to learn and implement green building techniques now so they don't find themselves behind the curve in the near future."

Approaches to green building can include orienting the home on the lot to minimize solar heat gain in the summer and maximize it in the winter, using light colors on walls and in roofing to create a "cool shell," maximizing light and ventilation, using energy-efficient appliances and lighting as well as energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, installing ceiling fans and programmable thermostats, using green materials such as sustainable lumber and recycled building materials, and more.

The HBA's Green Building Initiative council will provide technical and marketing expertise to help local builders utilize the voluntary Green Building Initiative guidelines and will support the construction of green built homes throughout Durham, Orange and Chatham counties. The HBA is also working with representatives from various residential energy-consulting firms to implement a third-party verification process to ensure homes constructed as part of the program adhere to the Green Building Initiative guidelines.

For more information on the Green Building Initiative of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties or the NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines, visit www.thegbi.org or call Leigh Scott at the HBA at 919-493-8899.

ABOUT THE HBA OF DURHAM, ORANGE & CHATHAM COUNTIES:
The Home Builders Association of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties is a non-profit trade association affiliated with the North Carolina Home Builders Association and the National Association of Home Builders. The HBA-DOC represents over 725 members, including builders of all types of housing as well as all the allied trades, suppliers, and professions that it takes to deliver a home.

ABOUT THE GREEN BUILDING INITIATIVE:
The mission of the Green Building Initiative is to accelerate the adoption of building practices that result in energy efficient, healthier and environmentally sustainable buildings by promoting credible and practical green building approaches. A not-for-profit educational initiative, the GBI is supported by a broad cross section of organizations and individuals with an interest in residential and commercial construction. For more information on the Green Building Initiative, please visit www.thegbi.org.

Bratz Forever?

A market can have the behavioral attributes of a young child, particularly when a product you're bringing to it doesn't offer the immediate gratification of, say, a Roboraptor robotic dinosaur or the Bratz Forever Diamondz Doll. And so it is with green homes in many markets around the country. "Looks responsible," many consumers say, "but I'm looking for something with comparables."

Green building will only begin making its way into the main stream in the next 18 months to 3 years. The attention on global warming is helping, and while the first of a series of punches thrown in this fight have all been from the automobile, its tag team partner -- and a strong fighter in its own right -- is the building. Buildings, both commercial and residential, have contributed 40% of the carbon dioxide that has created this crisis, and if we continue to build as we have in the past, brats like us will quickly go the way of the dinosaur.

But most Americans don't know what green building is. I spoke with a builder this week who let me go on for about 4 or 5 minutes about two homes I'm starting which received the Bronze rating of my local home builders association's Green Calculator. When I paused from my excitement to catch my breath, the builder asked, "What's green building?"

It's certainly not a Roboraptor. And the gratification is not immediate. Green building is expensive, and it takes much longer than the life of an average mortgage for most of the technologies and products used in building a green home to pay for themselves. At a green gathering I attended recently, we went around the room introducing ourselves. The room was flled with green specialists of various sorts, including the builder of Americ'a second greenest home in 2005. When it was my turn, with tongue in cheek I said I was a spec builder who's trying to build green competitivey. Of course, the room erupted with laughter.

Green products and technologies are expensive, in part because they're still in the early stages of acceptance. Applying what's called S-curve theroy -- which says that the amount of time it takes a product to gain 10% acceptance is the same amount of time it'll take that product to go from 10% to 90% acceptance -- it could be at least another 15 years before we see 90% acceptance of the products and technologies that will green our homes.

Which means these products and technologies will remain expensive for some time to come. Only when they're at least a third of their way to 90% will production rates produce the economies of scale and the tidal push necessary for their demand and availability.

We won't be brats forever, but we've got to stay the course and stem the tide. And at every chance you get, hand a kid a book on nature.