For green building companies, the good times have just begun.
Despite the worldwide economic crunch, a number of companies with green building products or services are doing well. Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, said that his green drywall company had a record year last year and is in the midst of a record quarter at the moment, he told an audience at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco.
Matt Golden of Sustainable Spaces, which does energy assessments for homes, says his company is wrapping up a record month. Dan Geiger, who heads up the U.S. Green Building Council in Northern California, says interest in the group continues to build. Classes are exceeding expectations.
And to top it off, David Elien, CEO of GE Lumination, says that the LED market is down, but because notebook makers are buying fewer LEDs. “General lighting is up,” he said.
So what gives. “Some of the bigger customers are taking their dollars out of new projects and putting them into their existing footprint and optimizing it for energy efficiency,” said Elien. “When they come out of the downturn, they want to lower their operating expenditures.”
Surace had another explanation. Housing starts are 83 percent down. But new home builders have never been interested in products like Serious’ EcoWall.
“Big tract home builders don’t care. They don’t pay your electrical bills,” Surace said. (Surace, by the way, sits on numerous green building advisory committees and boards. Serious also sells windows.)
The product is mostly being bought by commercial builders and custom home builders. A lot of these segments are only down moderately. Large builders like Webcor now get the lion’s share of revenue from green projects.
The stimulus bill will also pump billions into retrofits and energy efficiency programs, Surace and Golden said.
You can learn more about it at the Green Building Summit we are holding in Menlo Park, Calif. on June 11. If you have a business plan for green building or would like to participate, drop me a line.
Greentech Media's Green Light blog covers the full-scope of the greentech world, while expanding the range of our daily news reporting with brief and insightful blog posts from our Greentech Media editors, GTM Research analysts and numerous guest bloggers.
Comments [2]