Meritage moves up green home scale, but more needs to be done

Finding a newly built “green” home used to be a chore. Now every home builder’s got a sign up. A new study from Calvert Investing, which has a specialization in green and sustainable portfolios, found that while home builders are making progress, there’s still more to be done. The study looked at the top 10 publicly traded home builders. Scottsdale-based Meritage Homes jumped up five places to third on the list, trailing only Los Angeles-based KB Home and Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based Pulte, which also has a large Arizona presence with its own, and its Del Webb brands. Meritage did well in energy use, as it has turned to producing much more energy efficient homes across its product line and adding solar into that equation. The trouble, at least according to the report, is that there is plenty of room for improvement. On the 42-point scale, the average score was 15 points, and without what KB Home and Pulte are doing, there wouldn’t be much of a green home building industry of which to speak.

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