We were in France on vacation this year, and I was interested to see a growing deep green orientation there.  In the past, it has always felt like France was lagging behind Germany, Sweden, and the UK in addressing climate change on the ground.  I could feel a difference this year though – in the street art, growing bio street markets, and green initiatives. 

In Paris, a year long planning process resulted last year in “le Grand Paris“, sponsored by President Sarkozy as a way to reshape the capitol to have a smaller footprint in the coming centuries.  Several new deep green skyscrapers, such as Hypergreen, have been proposed in the last several years.  Just in the last two years, Paris has started a dedicated effort to promote bicycling, and there was a new bike rental program called Velib which was used by lots of folks, including commuters – in a short amount of time it has become a great success. 

zHome at Hypergreen display, Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine

Out in the countryside, PV panels were showing up on roofs.  Folks said the big controversy was the local planning authorities were concerned about the aesthetic integration of the panels on the historic tile roofs.   All in all, really positive signs – you could feel the change in the air.

PV installers' van

zHome starts construction tomorrow, April 6th!  After some initial utility work, we will be installing the ground source wells.  I will do a separate post on that, and include some video so you can see what it’s all about.  We will also have an onsite informal get together next week if folks want to view the well drilling.  We will be continuing construction for about a year, when we will open for public tours.

So, how did this come about?  Howland Homes, our builder partner, has formed a joint venture with Ichijo USA, which is providing project financing.  Ichijo USA is the American subsidiary to the Ichijo Group of Japan, which is a major homebuilder there.  Last year they built about 8,000 homes with a total sales value of $2.1 billion. Ichijo is currently building highly energy-efficient homes in Japan, including the i-cube, which includes a heavily-insulated exterior (R-30 walls) and air source heat pumps as standard specification.  They completely get what zHome is about, and have been real leaders and innovators in their home market. 

It feels great to be starting construction.  The team is really excited to begin our education program and start rolling with our market transformation.  I am personally incredibly excited to have Ichijo as part of the project.  zHome is now international in scope, influencing not only Issaquah, the Puget Sound region, and the Northwest, but potentially Japan as well.  If we are going to be serious about addressing climate change, it is going to be these sorts of international partnerships that are going to do it.

More on details of all this as we move forward – I just wanted to get the word out!

zHome is being built in accordance with stringent environmental benchmarks.  These are actually contractually established between the City of Issaquah and Howland Homes.  You can  read the benchmarks here if you would like to delve into these further (all 14 pages of them!).  You can see for yourself exactly what design criteria have been established for the project.   

So why benchmarks?  To me it goes back to the graph shown on the Why Green Homes? portion of the site.  In big picture terms, zHome is about looking at the cold hard numbers of building’s hefty environmental impacts, and taking those numbers as close to zero as possible.  There is something pure about a numeric driven design process:  set your goal, and let the design process figure out the most efficient way to get there.  It’s not that dissimilar to a gas or carbon tax – get aggressive, and then get out of the way and let the people involved figure out how to respond.  I also think there is something powerful about giving a number to what you’ve achieved, as opposed to some more qualitative measure – I think your average person can get it better.

And then there’s accountability and integrity.  The zHome benchmarks are all subject to verification by the City.  In some cases our other partners are involved in this process as well.  For example, Howland Homes’ energy model (done by Stantec) has been vetted and reviewed both by the City and the WSU Energy Program.  We feel that if you’re going to make strong claims (such as the project is achieving zero net energy), there should be integrity and transparency behind those claims.  Very few of the projects that are claiming zero net energy have actually undergone energy modeling to verify the claim, and fewer still have been verified by outside parties.  And many projects and builders that use the term “zero energy” are actually talking about it conceptually, in terms of it simply being a goal or good idea, or being part of a long term program to achieve zero net energy sometime in the future.  I feel that that dilutes the power of the name because it implies this very difficult goal is being met regularly.  Certainly our goal should be zero energy, but when it comes to individual projects, zero energy terminology should be used carefully and transparently.

The Seattle Times ran an article when the City Council initially approved the project.