What concerns me is ways to build energy efficient homes with passive and active solar heating features, and do so affordably.  I always consider local market construction materials, and how to use them to achieve something that will compete with designs using the latest new fab materials (which can add more cost and more proceedures to construction).

I have this vision of buildng affordable energy efficient homes that come complete with renewables such as passive solar with active solar space heating panels in the design, which are all paid for with one payment, the monthly home loan payment.  The idea here being that of a home that never has its energy bills come about to compete with the monthly home loan payment, and a home that helps pay for itself in savings.  In this way we can have the prefered product, and one that can compete with the more costly designs. 

There is a way to do this, and also rely upon construction crews having only the knowledge of old school construction methods (whether they have any knowledge of LEED certification or not).  I think that in terms of creating a new green building market we have to have a place to start and a means to start that is affordable.  Since hard to afford cost means that the product is not going to move on the market fast enough and this equates to unsustainable cost in the long run. 

Of course a LEED certified company is prefered but in some regions you have to have a company travel from another state to do the construction and this itself is a problem.

Hence what I propose is a design approach to explore the most affordable designs for construction to pass off the savings to the home owners who invest in such homes, that provide them with a return in terms of monthly cost savings to operate.  In turn they buy a home with a higher appreciation value, and in this way we fuel the real estate market again in terms of real estate appreciation over time, where people buy speculating on making a profit in time.

I see that we can create a green building market and fuel it this way, in turn we create a market for green products and services that walk hand in hand with the green building market.