Thinking of building green? Now’s the time. New green building opportunities are coming together in Washington. 

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 contains several provisions to reward green builders and accelerate green building. The bill encourages consumers to build green homes or remodel their homes to improve energy efficiency through the Green Resources for Energy Efficient Neighborhoods (GREEN) Act. The act encourages the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) to insure at least 50,000 energy-efficient and location-efficient mortgages by December 31, 2012. It also requires federal banking regulators to establish “green banking centers,” which will help customers looking for information about acquiring green mortgages. 

The government is taking steps to promote green building. Photo By EDubya/Courtesy Flickr.

The bill also authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) WaterSense program to reduce water use and conserve energy by designating products as water efficient. Through Watersense, the bill also provides funding for a program that will reward consumers who use residential water-efficient products, with rebates.

To more easily evaluate residential and commercial buildings’ energy performance, the bill also established The Building Energy Performance Labeling Program, which will direct the EPA in creating consistent energy performance standards for new construction.

The bill also extends the federal government’s purchasing power, allowing it to purchase renewable power for up to 20 years.

The bill still needs Senate approval. If it becomes law, it would completely alter the way the United States approaches energy use. Energy would cost more because it would be more expensive to produce, more fuel-efficient cars would dot the roads and natural gas would be used more than coal.

Buildings account for 40 percent of U.S energy consumption, 39 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and 13 percent of water consumption. We at Natural Home already know the importance of green building; we’re glad to see the government taking steps to promote it.

What do you think about the new energy and climate legislation? Tell me about it in the comments section.

At Natural Home, we saw this one coming. 

Americans want smaller, more affordable homes, according to a 2008 survey by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).  In fact, 60 percent of American said they prefer smaller houses with more amenities to houses with more square footage. 

Since the 1950s, housing in America has reflected the idea that bigger is better. The average home has grown from 1,600 square feet in the 1970s to more than 2,500 square feet today. Happiness hasn’t grown along with house size, however, and more Americans are looking to downsize, saving money on materials and energy. 

Jay Shafer's Tumbleweed Tiny Houses are moving masterpieces. NH Archives.

Designers and builders are also responding to the new trend. According to  American Institute of Architects (AIA) surveys of 500 residential architectural firms found that home sizes are declining. 

Some designers are even basing companies on small homes. Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny House Company builds houses (or lets you build them yourself) that range from 65 to 140 square feet. Brad Kittel’s Tiny Texas Houses builds 12 foot by 20 foot houses almost entirely out of salvaged materials. 

Do you live in a small home? We hope you’ll share your story in the comment section.

Last weekend—the second anniversary of the tornado that destroyed the small town of Greensburg, Kansas—residents invited the public to see its progress toward becoming one of the first green towns in the United States. Greensburg homeowners and business owners have rebuilt much of the town with eco-friendly construction materials. 

In the devastating tornado’s aftermath, Greensburg city officials committed to using 100 percent renewable energy from a wind farm a few miles south and mandated that every city building be built to the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED Platinum standards. 

The Silo eco-home will be a model for smallscale sustainable food production. The roof will be transformed into usable space through the creation of an herb and vegetable garden. Photo Courtesy Greensburg GreenTown. 

GreenTown is a community-owned organization that partnered with city officials to rebuild the town in a sustainable manner. With assistance from the USGBC and Ogden Publications, parent company of Natural Home, Mother Earth News, The Herb Companion and Utne Reader magazines, GreenTown has planned several buildings slated to qualify for LEED Platinum status, including the John Deere dealership, which opened for business in January; Sun Chips Business Incubator building, completed this May; and the Kiowa County Memorial Hospital, which will be complete in fall 2010. In addition to these buildings, the 5.4.7 Arts, a fine arts community center, achieved LEED Platinum level in 2008. 

In addition, GreenTown’s Chain of Eco-Homes project offers 12 model homes that act as “living laboratories.” Constructed of eco-friendly building materials, each home is scientifically monitored to determine how the materials perform. The homes are open to the public as lodging and as an information center. GreenTown broke ground last December and completed two homes on May 4, 2009. It hopes to complete two more homes by the end of 2009 and the remaining eight by the end of 2011.

It’s zero degrees here in Boulder today. But the sun is brilliant, and the foothills are majestic, all covered in snow. I’m dealing with an Inauguration Week hangover, vacillating between hope about our country’s fresh start and despair over rotten economic news that just keeps on coming. 

I really want to take Carol Venolia’s advice, from her “Design for Life” column in the current issue, and spend the rest of the winter in hibernation. But that’s impossible, so I’m looking on the bright side. And the good news is, there’s plenty of good news out there right now. My email inbox has been full of it. 

1. President Obama’s stimulus plan includes tens of billions of dollars to green up our electricity, putting 460,000 Americans to work on energy projects and doubling the amount of alternative energy produced over the next three years. The plan includes funds to "weatherize" 2 million homes by improving insulation and leaky windows. Needless to say, we love this idea!

2. We’re trading in our status as a hyper-consumer culture and becoming a yard sale nation. James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, about the challenges posed by the coming permanent global oil crisis, climate change and other "converging catastrophes of the 21st century," wrote last week on Alternet: “Say goodbye to the ‘consumer society.’ We're done with that. No more fast money and no more credit. The next stop is ‘yard-sale nation,’ in which all the plastic crapola accumulated over the past fifty years is sorted out for residual value and, if still working, sold for a fraction of its original sticker price. This includes everything from Humvees to Hello Kitty charm bracelets.” As advocates of reuse and salvage, we’re smiling about this one.

3. Homebuyers want green homes. At the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas last week, the National Association of Home Builders revealed survey results showing that 92 percent of respondents would rather have an energy-efficient home with lower utility bills versus a cheaper home without them. And homeowners said they would spend an average of $6,000 more on a home that would save them $1,000 annually on energy costs. Hey, we’re down with that.

4. Homebuyers want smaller homes. In the July-September quarter of 2008, the average size of a house under construction fell 7.3 percent, to 2,438 square feet from 2,629 square feet in the previous quarter, according to the NAHB. Ninety percent of builders told the NAHB that they’re building smaller homes.

5. “Many think 2009 will go down as the year green goes mainstream and homebuyers become much more savvy about the need for eco-friendly options,” columnist Michele Lerner wrote earlier this month in the Residential Real Estate Examiner.

2009 looks to be our year. And that ought to keep us all warm for a while.

This first week back after the holidays is always a little rough for me. 

It’s our final production week; we’re sending the March/April gardening issue off to the printer. It’s nice, if bizarre, to be looking at layouts full of lush, bountiful gardens on a bleak January day. That’s one of the old-school things I love about printed magazines, that need to work almost half a year ahead of the calendar in order to make up for the long, cumbersome mechanical printing process. It seems so quaint, in this age of Twitter. 

Next up is our tenth-anniversary issue. Gearing up for that one’s been making me feel nostalgic (and old). Ten’s a lot of years. I was such an innocent kid back in 1999, when I called up Pliny Fisk at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Austin and made him laugh out loud with how little I knew about green building. (I confused Lake Flato], a green architecture firm, with Lake Travis, a real lake west of Austin.) A couple more trips to Austin (and other green hot spots), and I knew a little more than I knew before—but, lucky for me, that was more than most. Green building was still pretty grass roots, an open network of information exchange, in 1999.  

I think we made some mighty fine magazines back in those days. We featured a lot of funky, one-of-a-kind natural houses (the kind I’m particularly partial to), but we erred in not offering enough for regular folks (like me) who may not ever build that way. We adjusted our formula, readjusted again a few years later, and readjusted again. (That’s another beautiful thing about magazines…we get to do that. And now that we have tools such as online surveys, we’re constantly microadjusting, which is pretty cool.) 

Back in 1999, I’d get some quizzical (even suspicious) looks from people when I told them about Natural Home. (I didn’t really look like a hippie. I was a suburban mother of two.) Those have died out these days, as most everyone has at least a toe in the green thing (even if it’s just a pair of bamboo socks). 

But as we stand here at the brink of 2009, I’m not completely convinced that green has hit “mainstream” status. The U.S. Green Building Council reports that only 2 to 10 percent of American homes could be considered green.  We have a ways to go, but our cache is only building. It’s cool to be hitting this 10-year milestone just as our incoming president dangles forth possibility in the use of words like “renewable energy” and “green jobs.” 

We’ve posted some of the houses we most love from the past decade at www.naturalhomemagazine.com/tenth-anniversary. Soon, we'll have a survey ready for you, and we hope you’ll stop by to vote for your favorites (or write them in, if you don’t find them there).  I believe these homes, which have paved the way for the exciting decade to come, will continue to provide inspiration and fodder for our housing dreams—well into this next millennium.