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Green construction can come with a hefty price tag. For companies building many homes en masse and on spec, that can be an issue.

So, it pays to iron out wrinkles beforehand.

“Our approach to energy efficiency and green building all along has been to try to identify the commonsense construction approaches that we can incorporate into homes without having to charge exorbitant amounts to make it happen,” said Kelly Helmes, the vice president of New Tradition Homes, a large production homebuilder based in Vancouver, Wash.

To that end, New Tradition is partnering with the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, a regional nonprofit, to pioneer a new generation of high-performance homes. Their pilot program, Next Step Homes, aims to implement advanced building techniques – like tighter envelopes, ductless heating and heat recovery ventilation systems – and then measure their performance.

NEEA believes such features closely resemble what building codes will require in three to four code cycles – or nine to 12 years – from now.

“Having a voluntary program that builders can participate in, like Northwest Energy Star (or others), can get them familiar and accelerate the adoption, so that when it does become code, builders are already aware of how to do it,” said Neal Grigsby, an initiative manager at NEEA.

Northwest Energy Star Homes is a regional version of an Environmental Protection Agency program that pushes for energy efficiency. Since 2005, NEEA has educated 2,500 real estate agents and 360 appraisers about the added value of energy efficient features. But that’s just one of many programs that NEEA has implemented to reduce power consumption.

It’s often a slow and painstaking process. For example, 10 years ago compact fluorescent lamps were fairly large and obscure. After NEEA worked with manufacturers to reduce CFLs’ size, and educated consumers about their benefits, they became household items.

“In talking about home evolution … it takes a long time,” said Veronica Marzilli, corporate marketing and communications manager for NEEA. “It’s a changing of the mindset for an industry.”

NEEA hopes to do the same with Next Step Homes by making ductless heat pumps and similar items industry standards. According to NEEA, DHPs have the potential to reduce energy bills in single-family homes by up to 50 percent, and annually save the region 200 megawatts of energy – the equivalent of powering 150,000 homes.

That efficiency will be increasingly important as energy demands rise. From 1990 to 2008, PGE saw air conditioning usage grow from 30 percent of its residential customers to 72 percent. The utility anticipates energy loads – after accounting for current efficiency measures – to increase 45 percent by 2030.

NEEA is funded by Energy Trust of Oregon – representing PGE and Pacific Power – as well as the Bonneville Power Administration, which represents approximately 130 utilities.

NEEA advocates that efficiency measures can be used to meet 85 percent of new demand for electricity over the next 20 years. The question is how that can best be accomplished.

Helmes has experimented with technologies in the past that didn’t fare so well. One foray, in partnership with Washington State University, explored the idea of controlling temperatures by conditioning crawl spaces. It was costly and performed poorly.

Helmes remains undeterred. He’d prefer to test out new technology on two to three homes instead of 200 to 300. He wants to be ahead of the code curve.

“Green shouldn’t be an option,” Helmes said. “Someone shouldn’t have to pay more for a home that performs well. So, being part of the program helps us explore new techniques and strategies, new products and see what ones work the best – which ones are most cost-effective so we can refine how we want to build going forward.”

New Tradition is building a Next Step Home in Southwest Portland; 12 others are elsewhere in Oregon or in Washington, Idaho or Montana. NEEA will monitor the homes’ performance over the next 12 to 13 months, and coordinate implementation of the most effective measures into the market.