What's driving green building opportunities?

Las Vegas -- For the green building market, it appears to be the case that "green for green's sake" is no longer the driving motivator. Instead, more homeowners, builders and remodelers are shifting the focus to green as a means to healthier living.

This health-first focus drove a lot of the ideas in "High Performance Trends: Opportunities in a Rapidly Growing Market," and the educational session held at the International Builders' Show here in Las Vegas.

The session, which is based on research from Dodge Data & Analytics and the NAHB, discussed the ways in which high-performance building has been on the ascent as the housing market continues to wake up.

Green building has also been a major player in residential starts, as pointed out by Stephen Jones of Dodge Data & Analytics. Similarly, the share of builders who can claim "green" for more than 60% of their projects are poised to jump 20% between 2015 and 2020 (from 31% to 51%). For remodelers, who had previously represented a much smaller percentage of that pie, that number will jump from 14% to 36%.

Still, though many builders and remodelers have very high expectations for the near future in terms of their anticipated green-building activity, higher first cost is actually a growing obstacle for increased green building activity, said Jones. The number of builders and remodelers who report a 5% incremental cost or higher to building green jumped from 58% to 77% between 2011 and 2016.

"If it makes so much sense, why isn't everyone doing it?" asked Les Bluestone of Blue Sea Development Company. Among his reasons: Builders are constantly fighting construction costs, "savings over time" isn't a favorite developer phrase, and there are too many standards and requirements involved in implementation.

In counteracting these obstacles, customer demand appears to be key. Jones' research pitted customer demand as the top trigger driving green building for builders (68%), though remodelers cited code ordinance and regulation changes (78%).

Jacob Atalla, VP sustainability at KB Home, added that a great way to to sell green to customers is to show them the math. With solar homes saving homeowners millions every year, many customers can plainly see the benefits when presented with projected energy savings for the next 10 years.

Beyond that, Atalla advocated for a "multilevel approach to sustainability."

"They're coming and they expect to hear the story from you," he said. "But there's no meaning in 'green is great.' If you put it into buckets, like we did with energy, water, healthier homes and smarter homes, then you're starting to compartmentalize the conversation."

Another major insight into the minds of customers? More knowledge and experience as a home buyer equates to more interest in green. Surprisingly, this puts baby boomers ahead of millennials, who Jones said are "talking the talk but not walking the walk."

"They show lower rates of participation in what could be considered environmentally responsible behaviors," he said. "They actually showed similar levels of misunderstanding about terms like VOC and net zero as other groups."