PSD Research Contributions Lead to New Four Billion Dollar National Green Building Initiative

Ithaca, NY

Based on research contributions from Performance Systems Development (PSD) over the past five years, Enterprise Community Partners has committed four billion dollars to financing the next generation of its Green Communities initiative. The newly released Enterprise report, Incremental Cost, Measurable Savings: Enterprise Green Communities Criteria, is the first of its kind, demonstrating that green building is cost effective when building affordable housing to the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. PSD conducted data analysis and savings validation to this major nationwide study supporting energy-efficient, green affordable housing.

The Enterprise report contains validated data on the overall savings generated by bringing affordable housing into alignment with the Green Communities criteria, as defined by Enterprise Community Partners. As part of the study, Jerone Gagliano, Director of Energy Engineering Services for PSD, and others at PSD analyzed the incremental cost of meeting the criteria, as well as the energy, and water savings for 27 affordable housing developments nationally.

PSD was invited to the next generation of the Enterprise Green Communities launch event in Washington DC, during which the report was quoted by Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. PSD was personally thanked for their contributions by Doris Koo, President and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners. Jerone Gagliano commented, “It has been very rewarding working with such a forward thinking group as Enterprise.”

The TREAT building modeling software was used to calculate the predicted energy usage for both of the as-designed buildings to the Green Communities Criteria and the baseline buildings. TREAT was further utilized to validate the predicted energy usages against actual utility bills. We also analyzed the relative cost impact across 51 Green Communities developments, providing feedback on the best practices for cost-effectively meeting the criteria. Enterprise used this data to demonstrate the ability to reduce the average cost of building green.

“This report is the evidence that the marketplace has needed to make green affordable housing commonplace”, said Greg Thomas, President and CEO of PSD.

Enterprise Community Partners is a leading provider of the development capital and expertise it takes to create decent, affordable homes and rebuild communities. For more than 25 years, Enterprise has introduced neighborhood solutions through public & private partnerships with financial institutions, governments, community organizations and others that share our vision. Enterprise has raised and invested more than $10 billion in equity, grants and loans to help build or preserve more than a quarter million affordable rental and for-sale homes to create vital communities. Enterprise is currently investing in communities at a rate of $1 billion a year.

Visit www.enterprisecommunity.org and www.enterprisecommunity.com to learn more about Enterprise's efforts to build communities and opportunity.

Download the Incremental Cost, Measurable Savings: Enterprise Green Communities Criteria report here.

Performance Systems Development specializes in providing software, training, and consulting to the building energy efficiency industry. The company provides a whole-systems approach to energy policy, programs, solutions, and software processes, to improve process efficiency. PSD continues to develop TREAT, a leading energy simulation tool for building retrofits, and Green Energy Compass, a residential benchmarking tool. PSD delivers green jobs training, Building Performance Institute certification training, and a licensed curriculum for building professional training programs.