'Green' building: A new economic cluster in area

A Whitefield contractor is among a group of builders anticipating a trend in the construction industry that is taking hold in Maine.

Curry Caputo, a "green" builder and certified energy auditor with Sustainable Structures, said he has taken on two partners and plans to hire more workers in preparing for the availability of federal stimulus money that will be used to weatherize homes and make other energy savings improvements.

His partners are learning the new standards for building and renovating environmentally-friendly, energy efficient homes.

"We are anticipating changes in Maine's construction field, including the unified statewide building code that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2010, contractor licensing and new green building standards," Caputo said. "While many of these changes apparently threaten or intimidate other carpenters and builders, Sustainable Structures sees the changes as necessary to weed out substandard building practices, uninsured contractors and allow for more energy-efficiency in the buildings existing today and those to be built in the future."

Caputo said legislators are dealing with a long list of energy-related bills that will change the business including LD 501, which seeks to increase Maine's energy security and reduce dependence on oil.

"This is permanently how we are going to have to build, and not because of any political agenda. We can't afford to build any other way. The typical Maine house uses anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 gallons of heating oil in the winter. That's way too much energy just to stay warm," George Callas, of Build Green Maine.

The Build Green Maine connects practitioners in the various areas of green building and renewable energy with each other and with homeowners and other stakeholders in Maine's communities: governments and nonprofit, financial and educational institutions.

He said businesses like Sustainable Structures and Kennebec Home Performance are part of a new economic cluster in Maine. A economic cluster is geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, in this case green builders and energy auditors, in a particular field.

Callas said there is a growing number of builders, architects, product designers, sellers and energy experts interested in energy efficiency and environmentally responsible building construction.

Charlie Holly, owner of Kennebec Home Performance in Waterville, also is part of this emerging cluster. His specialty is energy audits.

"We know in the business that having an energy audit makes a huge difference, and also having someone come back to do the testing as well," Holly said.

Callas said the Maine Housing Authority will receive more than $40 million from the economic-stimulus package for its weatherizing programs, and Efficiency Maine will receive more than $20 million for energy-efficiency incentives and programs.

In Hallowell, Curry Caputo's partner, Troy Ireland, has gutted an early 1900s home on Warren Street and is replacing old materials with energy-efficient ones.

He and his three partners will use the home as a showplace for their green building and design business, Sustainable Structures Inc. in Whitefield.

Green building is the process of erecting or remodeling structures in a way that will be more energy efficient, he said. Green building contractors are doing this by strategies that reduce water consumption and indoor air pollution or by replacing traditional building materials with renewable, lower toxicity products.

"This is what our company is all about," Ireland said. "It's kind of a changing of the guard right now. If anyone is building a new home for somebody or doing a renovation, if you don't super insulate it and you don't make it an extremely energy-efficient house, as a builder, you're doing your client a disservice. Every builder needs to get caught up on this."