2024 Hankin Distinguished Lecture: A Homebuilder’s Journey to Carbon Neutral Construction

Gene Myers, owner and chief sustainability officer of Thrive Home Builders, delivered the 2024 Hankin Distinguished Lecture, hosted by the residential construction program and the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center, which is housed in Penn State’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His talk, “A Homebuilder’s Journey to Carbon Neutral Construction,” was held at 4 p.m. on Nov. 6 in Robb Hall in the Hintz Family Alumni Center at University Park. A reception followed the free, public event.

Thrive Home Builders, based in Denver, Colorado, is a seasoned builder of high-performance homes. Recent climate events, culminating in the New Year’s Eve 2021 Marshall Fire that destroyed over 1000 homes in the Denver metro area, prompted Thrive to map out its own climate action plan. Thrive completed its first carbon neutral home, a Green Builder Magazine Vision Home, in its Sonders Ft. Collins project. The home won the Energy and Environmental Builder Alliance (EEBA)’s Excellence Award for Carbon Neutrality at the 2023 EEBA Summit. Thrive has since embarked on two all-electric communities in the Denver area and one all-electric and carbon neutral community in Breckenridge. Benefit from Thrive’s lessons learned and its vision for becoming a carbon neutral builder.

More information is available at phrc.psu.edu.