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A new housing development going up in Valencia, Calif., is setting out to be the largest net-zero community in the nation—potentially the world, CNBC reports. More than 21,000 homes will be part of the new community and it will have no carbon footprint.
The development, which is being built by FivePoint, will include 21,500 homes on 15,000 acres. Major builders like Lennar, Toll Brothers, Tri Pointe, and KB Home will be building in the community, which will include multifamily buildings, affordable housing, and commercial space as well.
To achieve net zero, the homes will have solar panels and have electric vehicle chargers in garages. Each home will have a high-performance attic that aims to reduce the need for air conditioning, heating, and ventilation. All irrigation will use recycled wastewater. The community will have shared electric vehicles—like scooters and e-bikes.
The homes will be priced between $400,000 to more than $1 million. Valencia is about an hour from downtown Los Angeles.
The developers hope the community will serve as a model for other real estate developments in navigating environmental zoning and finding ways to build in a more environmentally friendly way.
“I believe this will be a step forward,” Emile Haddad, CEO of FivePoint, told CNBC. “And our hope is that a lot of people will actually start imitating and start raising the bar higher.”
John Burns, CEO of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, believes it will. “A lot of my clients are saying we’re looking for ESG (environmental, social, governance), and developments like this are going to attract capital, so you’re going to see more people doing developments like this so they can get the capital,” Burns says.