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Making the Green-Building Dean's List

LEED for Homes is a new, comprehensive national certification program for green, energy-efficient homes. Builders who’ve tried it like it, but will it change the way houses are built?

by Sean Groom

Developers in different parts of the country have designed and built houses that meet new national-certification standards for green, energy-efficient building. This article focuses on one such house in Maine, another in Idaho, and a third in Washington state—but none of these houses has sold yet. Why? Author Sean Groom takes us inside the LEED for Homes program, its requirements, its goals, and its grades, in an attempt to understand the promise of LEED-H and what prospective homebuyers might be thinking.

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Magazine extra: Read Understanding LEED-H Scorecards to see—point for point—how the three case studies achieved LEED's silver, gold, and platinum rating.

From Fine Homebuilding195 (Houses) , pp. 94-101 April 16, 2008