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After a long year of slogging through highly detailed considerations, the committee developing green building codes for Santa Fe can claim success. Started in 2007, the initial working group was large and diverse and represented a broad cross-section of green thinking Santa Feans determined to mandate City green building codes. As often happens with taskforce work, the participants were gradually winnowed down to a trusted few to see the task through to its logical conclusions.
Under the direction of City of SF Senior Planner, Katherine Mortimer, the final group consisted of myself, President of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association (SFAHBA), SFAHBA 1st Vice-President and chair of the SF Green Building Council Faren Dancer, SFAHBA 2nd Vice-President Dalinda Bangert, and Harold Trujillo, an engineer recently retired from the State Energy Minerals and Natural Resources Department who is under contract with the City as a code specialist.
At the beginning, not surprisingly, there was a question among the larger code group as to whether having strong representation by senior SFAHBA people was a potentially risky idea. Indeed, the phrase “foxes in the hen house” was bandied about.
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The case was made, however, that even though the HBA at a national level may seem reluctant to embrace green codes, the NM HBA contingent represents the radical fringe at the national level, SF represents the radical fringe at the state HBA level, and the three participants on the code group represented the radical fringe of SFAHBA. So the challenge for Faren, Dalinda, and me will be to convince our 800 members that we tried our best to ensure the codes are fair and achievable. And though they will make homes cost more to build, those homes will cost less to operate, be healthier, conserve water, and will absolutely contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which is obviously the point.
The six sections of the codes are: Site Considerations, Water Conservation, Resource Efficiency, Energy Efficiency, Indoor Environmental Quality, and Homeowner Education. Each category has a minimum level of achievement based upon a menu of weighted choices with different points assigned. The designations start with Silver, the code minimum, and then go up through Gold, Platinum and Emerald. A home seeking higher levels must accumulate more points in each category. Energy Efficiency is the easiest section to measure, since its score is based on a third-party protocol known as HERS (Home Energy Rating Service). The City of SF actually began requiring all new homes built in 2008 to get a HERS rating, at that point, it did not stipulate a minimum score.
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