Sorting through the Green Building Programs and Certifications

• Earth Advantage Homes Silver, Gold and Platinum
• Energy Star Homes
• LEED for Homes
• Homes Built to Code
• Oregon Energy Code

I'm in the building industry and I have a hard time keeping all of these new programs straight!

Let's start with the easy part, the least energy efficient building program. Surprisingly, building to current residential building code in Oregon creates the least energy efficient home! What!?! How can this be possible? Sadly, it's because building codes take a long time to be adopted and the process for changing them is even longer.

Instead of waiting for code to change or trying to influence this process, the eager beavers in energy performance for buildings decided to take the problem into their own hands. These various entities gathered the latest research on sound building science and created optional, prescriptive building paths. Earth Advantage, Energy Star, and LEED for Homes are all examples of these incentive based programs. These programs, while meeting code, guide and inform a builder on how to build a better, more energy efficient home; in other words, a home that will use less energy and cost the owner less to operate.

So what is the best green building program? After examining all the programs mentioned above, along with similar programs in California and their Title 24 Energy Code, my own education and research brought me to Miranda Homes. Exciting! Stay tuned while I do my best to sort them out.

Lisa