DENVER — May 7, 2024—Today, Thrive Home Builders (Thrive) is pleased to announce that it will be among the first builders in the country to offer production homes that earn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR NextGen certification. Launched today, the new certification is a voluntary, leading-edge program that will increase national energy and emissions savings by accelerating the adoption of advanced, energy-efficient technologies in newly constructed homes and apartments.
Thrive has been an ENERGY STAR partner since 2003 and has built more than 2,100 ENERGY STAR certified homes, helping to eliminate 2,917 metric tons of greenhouse gas, equivalent to the emissions from 695 gas-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year. By participating in EPA’s new ENERGY STAR NextGen certification, Thrive will continue to build on this history of success.
“Thrive Home Builders has designed and built Energy Star homes for the last 20 years, and we are excited to continue this partnership by building homes certified in the new ENERGY STAR NextGen program,” said Bill Rectanus, Chief Operating Officer at Thrive. “This program and its focus on efficient, all-electric home technologies aligns with our commitment to above code building practices to bring the highest levels of energy efficiency, healthy indoor air quality, and durability to our homeowners.”
In fact, Thrive has already built 13 homes that meet the new ENERGY STAR NextGen certification guidelines in Denver’s historic Loretto Heights community. The development itself will eventually be the home of more than 300 rowhome, townhome, and single-family ENERGY STAR NextGen homes. Thrive’s E-PWR Frequency Collection at Lyric in Lone Tree, Colorado, also will feature 54 ENERGY STAR NextGen homes.
“The ENERGY STAR NextGen certification builds on the 30-year legacy of the EPA’s ENERGY STAR program and shows that we can build the homes that we need for tomorrow, today,” said Jonathan Passe, Manager of EPA’s ENERGY STAR Residential Programs. “We thank Thrive Home Builders for being an early adopter of this important new initiative.”
The ENERGY STAR NextGen program recognizes highly energy-efficient homes and apartments that feature advanced electric technologies such as heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and electric cooking appliances, along with electric vehicle charging. Compared to typical code-level construction, homes earning the ENERGY STAR NextGen certification are 20 percent more efficient and help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 – 80 percent.
Learn more about the ENERGY STAR NextGen certification: energystar.gov/nextgenhomes.
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About Thrive Home Builders: Denver-based Thrive Home Builders has been building energy-efficient and healthy homes in Colorado for over the last 30 years. Its building practices have made Thrive a leader in the industry for high performance homes that have provided homeownership for entry-level, income-qualified homeowners to luxury homebuyers. Thrive uses innovative building practices that incorporate the highest standards of energy efficiency and sustainability with the homeowner’s health in mind. Thrive’s Zero Energy Ready Homes are Zero Energy Ready Homes, Energy Star Certified, EPA Indoor airPLUS Qualified, and have an average HERS score of 22.
About ENERGY STAR: ENERGY STAR® is the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency, providing simple, credible, and unbiased information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed decisions. Thousands of industrial, commercial, utility, state, and local organizations rely on their partnership with EPA to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions. Since 1992, ENERGY STAR and its partners helped American families and businesses avoid more than $500 billion in energy costs and achieve more than 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions. Nearly 2.7 million energy-efficient new homes and apartments have earned ENERGY STAR certification to date, and more than 12% of all U.S. homes built in America earned the ENERGY STAR label last year.