By now this salient fact has been hammered into architects’ heads: buildings account for nearly 40 percent of carbon emissions. But most professionals don’t know how to change that number fast. Shrinking the built environment’s share of the carbon pie requires a host of measures, from efficiency upgrades to using low-carbon materials and cleaning up the grid—a complicated list. But one straightforward solution is to make more buildings zero energy. And, with the United States facing a severe housing shortage, the residential market presents an opportunity to tackle both the climate crisis and the need for shelter.

Zero energy construction is a fledgling market, but one with a steep growth curve. The nonprofit New Buildings Institute says that zero energy commercial buildings across the United States and Canada now encompass 80 million square feet, a tenfold increase since 2010. In the North American residential sector, the Energy & Environmental Building Alliance (EEBA) counted 28,000 zero energy housing units by the third quarter of last year, up 26 percent since the organization’s last tally in 2018.