The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Home, Sweet Green Home
The NAHB annual green home conference in St. Louis, with about 300 in attendance, showed me that green homes are ready to hit the mainstream home building and home buying market. Consulting with a small custom home builder, we discussed how to market green homes to the consumer. Lots of good product activity, including solar panels, structural insulated panels and all types of energy conservation systems. Harvey Bernstein of McGraw-Hill presented the results of a recently concluded survey of green homebuyers. Bottom line: green home buyers are better educated, wealthier, 25-44 and tend to cluster in the South and West. Satisfaction with their homes is very high. More on this survey later.
Posted by Jerry on 03/29/2007 at 07:54 AM
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Saturday, March 24, 2007
Green buildings can stop global warming. Marketers, pay attention!
The McKinsey Quarterly, Number 1 issue in 2007, shows the potential for abatement of carbon emissions beyond the “business as usual” case, to be both cost-effective and effective in reducing a large amount of carbon emissions. That’s a “win-win” scenario for both green building advocates and for the planet! The study examined all technologies with a potential to reduce carbon emissions for less than about $50 (40 Euros) per ton. Such measures as wind power have a real cost, while building energy efficiency measures such as added insulation are the MOST cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions. Other measures that are effective are so mundane that you wonder why we’re not doing them as standard practice: more efficient water heating and HVAC systems, more efficient lighting and better glazing. The business case for green buildings get more compelling each year! Green building marketers and green building consultants should take notice and start being more aggressive in their promotion of such building efficiency measures.
Posted by Jerry on 03/24/2007 at 10:47 AM
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Monday, March 19, 2007
Green Buildings Hotter than Chili Sauce in New Mexico!
Green building marketers, consultants and designers, pay attention. New Mexico Senate Bill 463, just passed and expected to be signed by Governor Bill Richardson, provides up to $10 million annually for commerical and residential green building tax credits, using LEED certification as the main tool: $5 million for commercial buildings and $5 million for residential. If greater than $25,000, the credit must be taken equally over four years. Here are two examples: a 50,000 sq.ft. LEED Gold building would get a credit of $127,500, or about $2.50 per sq.ft.; a 3,000 sq.ft. residence would get a credit of $11,000. These are credits: they directly reduce state taxes, dollar for dollar. Taking our example, at the LEED Gold level, there could be almost 2 million sq.ft. of such commercial buildings (or 39 total buildings at 50,000 sq.ft.) before the credits run out each year. At the residential level, the credit could pay for 400 such homes. Because of the “first come, first served” nature of the credits each year, the message to New Mexico builders, homeowners and developers is clear: get going! And for green building consultants, the message is also clear: find out about the law and open an Albuquerque or Santa Fe office immediately! For green building marketing, the tax credit should be the leading line in your marketing message. For a complete text of the green building tax credit law, email .
Posted by Jerry on 03/19/2007 at 06:23 AM
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
From Miami Vice to Green Building in the Tropics
I gave a “green development” workshop yesterday for the South Florida chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council in Coral Gables, next to Miami. I learned there are severe water shortages hindering new development in that area. And, of course, everyone is concerned about global warming, since a relatively minor rise in sea levels, along with more severe hurricanes, would make a lot of south Florida uninhabitable. Even in early March, the issues of humidity, mold and indoor air quality are clearly evident. Nonetheless, there is strong interest by Miami’s mayor, Manny Diaz, in greening the city, including possibly requiring LEED Silver certification for all buildings over 50,000 sq.ft. Other incentives may be added to this proposal. (This is an early-stage but serious proposal, according to my sources.) As for the current status of green buildings in South Florida, my host, Carolyn Mitchell, a landscape architect with one of Miami’s leading architectural firms, Zyscovich, Inc., reports that “there is only one certified project in South Florida - it is a precertified LEED-CS office property called Brickell Financial Center...there are a few registered projects close to certification - MTV Latin America HQ (LEED CI-pilot) and two public buildings in Broward County....Our firm is working on a LEED-registered school in Palm Beach County, soon to start construction.”
Posted by Jerry on 03/13/2007 at 04:10 PM
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