Green homes have been around for years but unfortunately they remain mostly within the grasp of wealthy homeowners living in exclusive neighborhoods.

That may be about to change in Carroll County, if the local home builders association has its way.

The Westside Home Builders Association, which represents builders and remodelers in Carroll, Douglas and Haralson counties, has embarked on a new green initiative that is tied to the EarthCraft House energy-efficiency program.

“We are incorporating the EarthCraft House program as our standard for the West Side Home Builders Association,” said Chris Collier, executive officer of the association. “When remodeled to EarthCraft standards, homes can realize as much as a 50 percent reduction in utility bills.”

According to the WSHBA Web site, three Carroll County-based builders have completed the course work and been certified by EarthCraft House in Atlanta. The builders – Jeff Camp of Camdur Building Group in Villa Rica, David Reynolds of David Reynolds Construction Co. in Carrollton and Robert McMillan of R&R Enterprises Inc. in Carrollton – can either build new homes or remodel existing homes to standards set by EarthCraft, which is just one of several green-home programs available to builders. Others include Energy Star, EIC Comfort Homes, and LEEDS (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

Collier is scheduled to give a presentation on the EarthCraft system at a green construction seminar set for Sept. 15 at the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce in Carrollton. The workshop runs from 9 to 11 a.m. and will also include presentations from a LEEDS representative and a company that sells green roofs.

Whether it is LEEDS, Energy Star, EarthCraft, Comfort Homes, or some other program, those interested in buying a green home or remodeling their existing home to a higher environmental standard need to be familiar with something called HERS, Collier said, which stands for Home Energy Rating System.

“We’re telling people that if their Realtor doesn’t know what a HERS rating is than you’ve got the wrong agent,” Collier said. “We’ve had about 32 Realtors (in the three counties) who have attended the EarthCraft training since June to prepare themselves to sell and compete in the green market.”

That market is about to expand, as builders learn to build green homes more affordably.

Collier said EarthCraft standards will add anywhere from 2 percent to 5 percent to the cost of traditional construction techniques.

He said the WSHBA has recently broken ground on an EarthCraft showcase home at West River Place subdivision in Douglas County that would sell for under $200,000. The association is planning to build another affordable showcase home in Carroll County in the near future.

“Usually, when people do EarthCraft-certified homes they’re over $1 million in neighborhoods north of Atlanta,” Collier said. “But they (EarthCraft) were kind of excited to be working with us because we wanted to build affordable homes that are within reach of the average home buyer. We are the only home builders association in Georgia focused on affordable housing under the EarthCraft program. We’ve been getting a lot of coverage on it nationally. The National Association of Home Builders has been watching us very closely.”

The program is also being used to target foreclosed homes that are sitting vacant, many of them in poor condition and needing to be remodeled. Collier said federal Neighborhood Stabilization funds are being used in many cases by investors scooping up foreclosed homes and looking to renovate them. The program is also helping to jump-start the beleaguered home-building industry.

“Our West Side Goes Green initiative is designed to reduce foreclosed properties and put our builders back to work by upgrading to those higher standards,” Collier said. “Until we address the inventory of foreclosed homes, our industry will not be able to recover. As long as a buyer can buy a home at 70 cents on the dollar, which is less than a builder can built it for, the builder cannot get financing and afford the cost of construction right now. His cost is greater than the price that foreclosed properties are selling for.”

David Reynolds, one of the Carroll County builders who recently got certified by EarthCraft Homes, said he believes there will be growing demand for green homes as the market recovers from the worst downturn he has seen in his 34 years as a home builder.

“Everybody is moving toward the green construction, high energy-efficiency homes,” he said. “We’re also learning about using materials that are available locally so you have less energy and transportation to get them to the job site. That is the direction we’re moving in, and several of us in the home builders association have gone to Atlanta to take courses on that. EarthCraft does all the monitoring of the houses built under their program.”

Trey Robinson, a Douglas County-based builder who owns the residential lots at Maple Street Commons in Carrollton, said green homes are just another niche that a prudent builder can exploit in a very tough economy.

“I also went through training for an EIC Comfort Home, and we’re certified with them,” Robinson said. “A Comfort Home is a step above EarthCraft, and includes a duct-blaster test on the whole home to make sure that your HVAC system has no leakage, and then they do a test to make sure there’s no leaks in the actual house envelope around the walls, windows and doors to make sure you’re not losing energy.”

The problem with the green construction movement over the years has been confusion on the part of the consumer, said Patrick Malloy of Patrick Malloy Communities Inc. in Carrollton.

“The problem in our industry is there’s like seven different levels of green,” Malloy said.

Those very few homeowners who are fortunate enough to be at the top of the green scale are net producers of energy — they consume energy during peak hours but actually generate their own power, usually through solar panels, during off-peak hours.

“This is wildly cost-prohibitive,” Malloy said. “But to comply with Energy Star you’re at a level one or maybe a two, and EarthCraft is like a 3.”

So, the term “green” is relative.

“Everybody would like a green home, but the reality is, short of some very low standards for some programs that are somewhat more energy-efficient than the average house, it’s cost-prohibitive to go green,” Malloy said.

Still, he thinks the Westside Home Builders Association is wise to jump on the EarthCraft bandwagon.

“Any step in the right direction is a step forward. Now everybody has made the first step and in four or five years we’ll all be at step five,” he said. “If everybody would build to the EarthCraft standards certainly we would have taken one if not two steps forward.”

The challenge is with affordability, and that’s why the local home builders’ initiative is significant. A level 3 on the green scale may be about the highest reasonable goal at this point, given the state of the economy.

“One-hundred percent of my home buyers say they want a green home if there is no cost associated with it,” Malloy said. “They want there to be net savings, meaning, if you can drop my energy bill by $40 a month, I’ll pay you $20 more a month. And if you reverse engineer that $20 a month it’s going to ultimately mean they can afford to pay about 1 percent more for the house.”

Even if EarthCraft only adds 2 to 4 percent, or $4,000 to $8,000, to the cost of a $200,000 home, that can be significant.

“In Alpharetta, that’s not that big of a deal,” Malloy said. “But in Villa Rica, that is a big deal. Margins are so tight right now it’s tough to get a builder to build and consumers have not shown they’re willing to reach into their pockets for green construction. When they are willing to pay for green then we will build more green, but just saying ‘I build a green house,’ what does that mean? You could be anywhere from a level seven to a level one.”

Malloy said the industry has a ways to go in educating the consumer about the various degrees of “green.”

“There might be more consumers who are willing to pay more for it if they were educated, but to date there hasn’t been,” he said. “There’s been so many different standards and terms on what constitutes a green home, that the consumer does not feel confident to sort through it all and get to the truth.”

A list of builders and Realtors in the region who are certified in the EarthCraft system is available online at westsidehba.com.