The building industry is moving to broaden “green” design standards beyond energy efficiency and towards more holistic views of resilience that consider natural and manmade hazards, and even the social contexts of buildings and neighborhoods. As communities increasingly face natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey in the Gulf Coast and Hurricane Matthew in North Carolina last fall, as well as financial shocks like the Great Recession, incorporating physical and economic resilience into housing design has become a pressing priority.
The North Carolina Housing Finance Agency incorporates energy and cost efficiency into its community homeownership programs through the SystemVision™ Program, which provides a guarantee to participating homeowners that their monthly heating and cooling costs will be less than about $30 per month thanks to energy-smart design standards.
