The Economy of Being Ecofriendly

“I've always liked granola. But before my children were born, no one would have ever called me the earthy, crunchy type. I'll admit I really didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about the environment. Yet a few months into this mom thing, I was surprised to find myself paying a lot more attention to recycling, organic food and the thermostat,” said Lourdes Ferrero.

The green thinking convert says that she put aside capitalistic perspective by just simply looking at the world around her from a different angle. It seemed as if she had an epiphany comparable to a born again Christian which revolutionized her lifestyle to making her and her family more eco-friendly. “Maybe it was seeing An Inconvenient Truth when my twins, Tristan and Nicole were just learning to crawl...or moving from Manhattan to Queens and noticing the environment around me when I took them out for afternoon strolls....or discovering the vast and overwhelming amount of waste we were producing,” said Lourdes. “Whatever it was, I am sure that motherhood switched on an energy saving light bulb in my head. Suddenly, I was much more conscious of my impact on the planet and how my newly purchased house did too.”

Across the tri-state region, as in the rest of the country, green homebuilding is growing, but remains a largely uncharted and unregulated morass of guidelines, incentives, programs, products and philosophies that can frustrate even the most intrepid and environmentally aware homeowner. In the absence of federal mandates, it has evolved from the bottom up, with different groups and occasionally states providing direction.

While New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have not adopted legislation governing green building for homes, some municipalities are moving ahead. But many a homeowners eager to hop on the "green" bandwagon tend to have reconsidered after seeing the price tag on Earth-friendly renovations.

Joking around Mark Esposito said, “It takes a lot of green to be green.” The 28 year old director of Evolve to Green Revolution explained that there are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Mr. Esposito are true idealist at heart seemed disheartened speaking of human nature when he said, “Most people try to convince themselves inaction is the route to take when they cannot be active because they cannot afford it.”

But some savvy owners in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx have found ways to save mountains of money by implementing methods to cut down their energy usage and having the government pay for it.

Mr. Esposito believes that making a house eco-friendly is becoming the new green craze along with purchasing hybrids. With the rising gas prices people started wanting to buy more hybrid cars to save money on fuel. It’s the same thing with houses people are now finally realizing that making their house eco-friendly or green will pay of big over the long run.

Mrs. Ferrerro is one these very people who after years of planning has started work on transforming her home to being more eco-friendly in part because of her endless efforts, time and work filling out EPA paperwork and New York State subsidy forms. She shows the folders of bureaucratic required paperwork she regarded as “frivolous absurdity.”

Administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Star is known to most people by its yellow tags, which indicate energy-efficiency levels on appliances. But it also has a program that encourages voluntary compliance to green homebuilding standards and that typically functions through power companies, like the Long Island Power Authority, or state entities, like the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. In most cases, tax credits, incentives or rebates are available if a home meets Energy Star standards.

In the era of $4-a-gallon gas prices, organizations that specialize in tapping federal funds for energy efficiency upgrades are being inundated with calls but these calls are not just about what gets better gas mileage a Pirus or Ford Escape. These calls are also from people who are moving into or looking to renovate their house’s or building new houses and they want all the perks but want it to adhere to Energy Star guidelines and have the most environmentally friendly home at a decent price.

"I don't know if it is marketing or the price of oil or what it may be, but there has been an upswing on the amount of calls we've gotten," says Mark Jenkins, an energy auditor at the Community Environmental Center in Long Island City. "We almost can't handle it."

The 14-year-old nonprofit group got its start by focusing on weatherizing buildings, but has since become a conduit for a number of funding sources for those seeking to save energy.

"We capitalize on all the funding the city makes available and pass it on to our clients," Jenkins said. The center even has its own in-house construction crews.

After the group performs an audit on a home, the same team draws up a detailed plan as to how to save energy.

If the building owner doesn't have a lot of cash to spend on renovations, the consultant may suggest only a few essential improvements.

Other clients take out low-interest loans and do a full efficiency upgrade, in hopes of seeing the best savings, Jenkins said.

To illustrate the confounding nature of green building, Mark Jacobson, a Queens architect, likes to start with a question: Between stone and plastic foam insulation, which one is green?

''You'll go, 'Of course, Mark, the stone is a natural product,' '' said Mr. Jacobson, who was trained at the New York University School of Architecture, where he now teaches part time.

But it's the context and the big picture, he said. Sure, the insulation may be a petrochemical. But the stone may be tumbled Brazilian marble that in shipping would have used a great deal of fuel. The insulation, he said, ''will pay you back year after year after heating season after heating season after cooling season with the benefits of its performance.''

''Is it perfect? No,'' he said. ''Is the stone perfect? No. But in many cases these are the deals with the devil that we make.''

''It was a big learning curve,'' said Carl Orza of his homebuilding project. As senior attorney for the Bayside Fund for the Environment,