The cost for someone to build a good quality green home
is some what more that it would cost to build a home in the
traditional way. In fact in the US alone more than
500,000,000 sq ft of green buildings are either being
designed or in the development stage or have been completed.
In fact there are many reasons as to why building
construction costs for a green home are only a little more
than those for a traditionally built one.
During the last few years various bodies have looked at just
what the building construction costs are involved when
building a green property. Certainly many have only found
that in fact it is only nominally more expensive to build a
home that is environmentally friendly.
Certainly one of the most current and certainly the most
reference studies to have been carried out was performed in
2003. This was carried out by a group of more than 40
California state government agencies and was known as
California's Sustainable Building Task Force. They looked
carefully at not just the building construction costs but
also the financial benefits which could be gained from
building a green property compared to using more traditional
methods.
In fact this study was the first of its kind to fully look
at the building construction costs and benefits from
building a green (environment friendly) building and focused
specifically of 25 office projects and 8 school buildings.
All of which had either actual or projected completion dates
between 1995 and 2004. These particular building projects
were selected as they had relatively solid cost data
available for both those that were green design and those
that were of a conventional design. All the costs for each
project was based on modeling as well as detailed cost
estimates provided by the constructors.
At the end of the study and on completion of all the
construction projects it was found that the average premium
for all of the 33 green buildings which were studied was
slightly less than 2% of the cost of the conventional
buildings. This equates to around their building
construction costs being between $3 and $5 per sq ft less.
