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What are the energy efficiency and green elements worth to you?
“The upgrades added a LOT to the value of the house. We were looking at the shingle-sided house across the street that was listed for around $470k. We felt that we could dump a hundred grand into the house and not have as nice a place as ours. We also looked at a livable Tudor on 38th that sold for $510k but needed a lot of work to make it as nice as ours. I'd say the energy efficient upgrades alone added around $40-50k to the house. The overall upgrades, with quality construction would likely double that.”
— Sequoia Homeowner; Timothy Harris
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“There is no better tool (EPS Label) that we have been able to find that quickly and accurately measures the energy performance of a home in a way that clearly resonates with the market.”— Aaron Fairchild CEO. |
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Green Canopy Homes is a Seattle-based homebuilder dedicated to future-proofing our existing housing stock by rebuilding homes to be green and energy efficient. The company buys drafty fixers, rebuilds them, and sells with the goal of providing market-rate homes that have measurable improvements in energy performance and consumption.
As an early adopter of Energy Performance Scoring from Earth Advantage, Green Canopy has fully integrated the EPS into their rebuild model in several capacities and they use it to demonstrate they impact they make on each home in a clear and marketable way. “There is no better tool that we have been able to find that quickly and accurately measures the energy performance of a home in a way that clearly resonates with the market,” says Aaron Fairchild the CEO of Green Canopy. The EPS helps the company show a miles-per-gallon score for each home that they purchase and provides them with a starting baseline for improvements.
At the outset of each project – Green Canopy completes a 3rd party energy audit that measures the home’s energy consumption prior to any work being done. Once the construction and retrofits have been completed, the auditors finalize the project with a “Post” energy score. This gives Green Canopy a “before” and “after” overview of the home and allows them to calculate the operational cost savings for the new homeowner. “That way we can accurately demonstrate value in our homes,” Aaron says – claiming that the EPS gives them an edge on the market. “No one else does this.”
Green Canopy is a huge supporter of the EPS because it is easy for the market to understand and cost-effective enough to use on every project. It is rigorous and granular yet demonstrates data in a way that every home-owner can understand. So far Green Canopy has completed 12 homes with an average reduction in energy usage of over 49%. That is nearly 16,000 kW/h per home!
Green Canopy is extremely proud of what they do for the environment and for their community. Their program has been able to mitigate over 100 tons of GHG emissions by improving the performance of homes across Seattle and they anticipate being able to complete another 20 projects over the next 3 years – mitigating another 200 tons of GHG’s. That is healthy air we can all breathe!
The Green Canopy mission is to inspire resource efficiency in residential markets. Each neighbor, homebuyer, homeseller, employee, sub-contractor, real estate agent, business partner and shareholders is aware of their mission and the impact that the company makes… and THAT, is the real Green Canopy success story.