According to a recent article many builders attending the NAHB National Green Building Conference in Raleigh, N.C., in May said that they have been able to sell sustainably built homes considerably faster than the traditionally built new homes that have been languishing in today’s tough market.

Not surprisingly for us at Green Squared, energy efficiency, according to speakers at the conference, remains the most salient aspect of the industry’s move to sustainability, and is the one benefit that’s most easily recognized by consumers.

And this is the first I’ve heard of energy efficient mortgages, but I LOVE THE IDEA.

The energy efficient mortgage treats savings on energy as an addition to the borrower’s income. While these loans exist mostly in theory, “you need to start demanding these,” he said.

While no one to date has systematically estimated the actual value green adds to a home, Porter (along with at least one other speaker at the conference) referenced early research calculating that every $1 in annual energy savings brings roughly $20 in additional value. Finding enough data to reach such a conclusion is one problem, and further complicating things is that fact that the bottom line on how much energy is saved ultimately depends on the behavior of the occupants of the home.