Dive Brief:

• Jon Flood, 74, is having a new house – his first ever – built in Fond du Lac, Wis., to show what U.S. efficiency will accomplish and what a European standard will do.
• The 2,370-square-foot house is half built to Energy Star specifications and half to the more rigorous European standard called Passivhaus.
• Flood enlisted a builder who was about to retire at 65 but jumped at the chance to build to environmental standards he had never had a chance to use.

Dive Insight:

Flood isn't doing it just to make the point that his new house will be eminently cheaper to operate than any of the old houses he has lived in, his son is shooting pictures and videotaping the project so they can offer that to local schools for their construction program. Europeans were paying high energy prices long before Americans began to feel the pain, Flood says, so their standards for building tight homes are ahead of U.S. efforts.