Four Insights from the Most Successful NZE Home Builders

This executive summary by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) outlines four key insights derived from interviews with eight leading net-zero energy (NZE) home builders in the US, who collectively account for 20 percent of the country's single-family NZE homes. The document discusses the economic viability of NZE homes, strategies for customer acquisition, the impact of labor shortages on construction methods, and the risk-mitigation benefits of building high-performance homes.

• NZE homes can be more cost-effective than standard-efficiency homes when viewed through the total cost of ownership, provided builders use an integrated, holistic design approach. This includes offsetting costs by downsizing heating and cooling systems for homes with more insulation or simplifying roof planes to optimize for solar. Builders anticipate that California's NZE code requirement, scheduled for 2020, will further reduce costs by increasing the market for NZE equipment.
• Scaling NZE homes requires overcoming customer acquisition and market barriers. Successful builders have shifted their communication from technical building science to focusing on health, comfort, and increased disposable income. Key market barriers include the lack of energy cost transparency for homebuyers and the fact that energy costs are not factored into mortgage underwriting, which prevents NZE homes from benefiting from lower debt-to-income ratios.
• Severe building-trade labor shortages, which peaked in 2017 with 64 percent of builders reporting subcontractor shortages, create an opportunity to adopt new construction methods. Using structural insulated panels (SIPs) and prefabricating building envelopes off-site reduces on-site time and typically results in tighter, better-insulated homes. This shift allows the industry to leapfrog outdated building practices.
• Building NZE homes is considered less risky than building standard homes because the high efficiency of the product exceeds energy codes, protecting builders from the costs and urgency of new code adoptions. Furthermore, having a highly differentiated product helps builders survive market downturns and recessions.

APA

RMI (2018). Four Insights from the Most Successful NZE Home Builders. https://rmi.org/resources/four-insights-from-the-most-successful-nze-home-builders/

Chicago

RMI. Four Insights from the Most Successful NZE Home Builders. 2018. https://rmi.org/resources/four-insights-from-the-most-successful-nze-home-builders/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Four Insights from the Most Successful NZE Home Builders |date=11 April 2018 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/four-insights-from-the-most-successful-nze-home-builders/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2018four, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Four Insights from the Most Successful NZE Home Builders}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2018}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/four-insights-from-the-most-successful-nze-home-builders/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }