Welcome to the Directory

Green Built Alliance has now been serving Western North Carolina for more than 20 years. Looking at it another way, that’s more than 240 months, 1,042 weeks, 7,300 days, or 175,200 hours.

Time is a funny, elusory thing. Some days seem to stretch indefinitely, while in retrospect, the years still slip through our fingers. Some of us feel especially aware of this contradiction now, having spent the majority of the past two years in a pandemic during which time seemed to simultaneously drag on forever and fly by in the blink of an eye.

Our nonprofit’s staff has been reflecting on the passage of time this year more than most as Green Built Alliance marks the milestone of its 20-year anniversary.

For those of you who have been with us since the beginning or for many years now, thank you for your ongoing involvement and enduring support. For those of you who have only come to know us in recent years or perhaps even just now in this directory reading, we’re glad you’re here.

New connections and longtime supporters alike may enjoy taking a walk down memory lane to reflect on the history of Green Built Alliance and the way we’ve grown over the recent decades through an article on page 40.

Much has changed over the past two decades since our organization got its start, and yet our commitment to our original mission of “promoting environmentally sustainable and healthy building practices through community education” has never wavered.

Highlights from this year

As we marked the start of our 20th anniversary year, Green Built Homes officially rolled out Version 3.0 of its certification checklist in January 2021. Updated and revised to stay current with changing building codes and increase simplicity for participants, the program now places more emphasis on regenerative elements, including the addition of a Net Zero Water Ready Certification and a pilot Regenerative Certification.

For a look at some of the past year’s most innovative projects, including the Appalachian State University residence halls that brought our program across the 2,000-certification milestone, explore the eight case studies on recent Green Built Homes certifications from pages 14 to 31.

In the spring of 2021, we celebrated a moment six years in the making as the much-anticipated solar electric system was installed on the roof of Asheville’s Isaac Dickson Elementary School, thanks to a community fundraising campaign led by our Appalachian Offsets program. For more on this project and what’s next for Appalachian Offsets, read the article on page 62.

Our Blue Horizons Project has stayed busy throughout this year running its Solarize Asheville-Buncombe campaign, which aims to increase the region’s adoption of and access to affordable solar installations. With innovative components including funding free solar systems for limited-income families and supporting workforce development, the Solarize Asheville-Buncombe campaign is featured in an article on page 50.

Also under the Blue Horizons Project umbrella, our Energy Savers Network program has begun work to make efficiency improvements on 1,000 homes over the next year through a partnership with the Housing Authority of Asheville. For more information on this effort and ways to get involved, read the full story on page 60.

Hopes for the future

The past couple of years have looked very different from what most of us expected for the start of this new decade. From the emergence of a global pandemic to the acceleration of the climate crisis, it can feel challenging to process the maelstrom confronting our communities.

These are turbulent times to be sure, and yet having the resilience to hold on to hope is key to our ability to stay engaged for the future. Despair paralyzes, while hope energizes.

Although it may not be happening as fast as many of us would like, electrification and renewables are increasingly a part of our new normal. New generations of leaders are driving efforts to help shift the conversation and inspire action.

As we sit poised at this infection point, we have tools within each of our personal power to make a difference. With U.S. buildings accounting for 40 percent of our country’s total energy use and carbon emissions, we know that our homes and workplaces are excellent places within each of our agencies to implement improvements.

Whether we are in the privileged position of being able to choose to build a new home in a green way from the ground up, or simply have the chance to make the meaningful small and steady sustainable upgrades to our existing houses, the homefront is one place where we all can effect positive change.

Actions taken individually and collectively in these crucial decades ahead can make a difference, and we still have the opportunity to correct our course.

We must not squander this opportunity to do everything in our power to benefit our planet and the generations to come.

20 THANNIVERSARY

2001-2021

20/20 vision

This is an interesting moment in which to be celebrating our organization’s 20year anniversary.

Two decades ago, our founders were ahead of their time as their foresight brought this nonprofit to life. Two decades from now, our community will be heading into 2042, the year by which the City of Asheville and Buncombe County have committed to completing a community-wide transition to 100 percent renewable energy with the help of our nonprofit’s Blue Horizons Project program.

As the need for green building has become more urgent and obvious in the past two decades, the truth of these words from the introduction of our first Green Building Directory published in 2002 has grown even clearer: “The growth and development of our cities and communities has a major impact on our environment. How and where we build is one of the most important factors in our future health and happiness.”

Today, we look back at our founders with gratitude for their prescience and perseverance in charting a new course and imagining the promise of a more sustainable future for our community. We hope in 20 years from now, we’ll be able to look back on the coming decades with the knowledge that we continued to rise to the challenge and did everything we could do to meet the moment.

This is all of our shared work. Green Built Alliance is grateful and humbled to be partnering with each of you in advancing sustainability in the built environment and preserving this planet we call home.