NGBS
US-EcoLogic is the leading provider of National Green Building Standard (NGBS) certifications in the country with 21 NGBS verifiers and more than 230 projects that have achieved or are pursing NGBS certification across the country.
NGBS is an above-code, ANSI approved, green program developed by the former NAHB-Research Center, now renamed the Home Innovation Research Labs. This program is specialized for residential housing and is designed to accommodate both single-family and multi-family housing, with certifications awarded for new construction, remodeling, and land development. Projects pursuing certification share common features such as healthier indoor environments, higher energy and water efficiencies leading to lower operating expenses, and sustainable lifestyles to name a few.
The program requires independent third-party verification, inspections and testing during construction which yields a higher quality product than your average building. These verifiers are trained, tested, accredited by Home Innovations Research Labs and required to come on site during rough and final phases of construction. A building can be awarded a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Emerald certification level, depending on the number of green practices successfully incorporated in design and verified at construction.
The NGBS protocol requires projects be designed, built, and verified to achieve high performance in six areas: Site Design, Resource Efficiency, Water Efficiency, Energy Efficiency, Indoor Environmental Quality, and Building Operation & Maintenance. There is also an optional certification that can be pursued for site design prior to construction. Certification levels are dependent upon the achievement of measures within each of these areas. Projects have the option of following either a Prescriptive or Performance based path.
Current versions of this protocol available to pursue are the NGBS-2015 (ICC700-2015) program, which requires performance minimums better than 2015-IECC energy code and the NGBS-2020 (ICC700-2020) program, which requires performance minimums better than the 2018-IECC
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