Barriers and Incentives for Affordable Multi-family Green Building Construction in California

Concerns over the energy consumption and environmental impacts of the built environment have been recently growing more than ever. States and local agencies in California make every effort to set rules and regulations to curtail depletion of resources and promote efficient construction and facility management. Policy efforts to deal with these issues have mainly focused on sustainable architecture, green technologies, and renewable energy and efficiency in the energy sector. Previous studies on California state green building policies have used empirical information extracted from secondary sources such as comparison of conventional and green building approaches, barriers to green buildings, energy saved per square foot for green buildings, and incentives. This paper presents the analysis of responses collected through a recent online survey on the barriers and incentives of green affordable housings construction in California. The total of 75 respondents include a broad range of subject matter experts such as architects, civil engineers, project managers, contractors, faculty members, interior designers, and real estate agents. 76% have been engaged in planning or construction of green buildings. Analysis of answers to the 12 questions presents strong indicators about the barriers and enablers of green building in California. Considering the fact that California is in the frontline of sustainability and energy efficiency policy development, results of this study are valuable to researchers and decision makers in other states and scalable to the federal level.