KB Home, one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., has released its 16th Annual Sustainability Report, which highlights the company’s sustainability and social impact initiatives and achievements in 2022.
Over the course of a year marked by substantial changes in the housing market and uncertainty in the global economic outlook, KB Home launched a microgrid community in California that represents a potential model for residential energy independence and interdependence. Additionally, KB Home made a commitment to water conservation for its new communities located in drought-impacted regions.
In 2022, KB Home launched the first residential microgrid communities of all-electric, energy-smart homes in California. The company also became the first national homebuilder to commit in July 2022 to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) highest water-efficiency standards for its new communities built in drought-impacted Arizona, California, and Nevada.
KB Home maintained its position as the number-one energy-efficient national homebuilder based on a national average Residential Energy Services Network Home Energy Rating System (RESNET HERS) index score of 48.
The company reached a new milestone of more than 175,000 high-performance ENERGY STAR certified homes built, more than any other builder in the nation, cumulatively saving homeowners an estimated $1 billion in utility bills and reducing CO2 emissions by an estimated 6.9 billion pounds.
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KB Homes also delivered its 17,500th solar home, achieving 57 cumulative megawatts of solar power installed and producing an estimated total of 97 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy annually. It also achieved a milestone of more than 19,000 WaterSense-labeled and Water Smart homes built and more than one million WaterSense-labeled fixtures installed, collectively helping to save an estimated 1.7 billion gallons of water annually.
By 2025, the company is targeting a national average HERS score of 45, down from 50 in 2020. Based on achieving this score, the company would reduce the estimated GHG emissions of its average home built in 2025 by 0.5 metric tons per year, or 8%, compared to its average home built in 2020.
KB Home is the only national builder to have earned awards under all of the EPA homebuilder programs, including ENERGY STAR, which establishes energy-efficiency standards, WaterSense, which outlines water-efficiency standards, and Indoor airPLUS, which focuses on indoor air quality.
KB Home’s 16th annual sustainability report is linked here.
