HERS, GreenPoint, LEED, Title 24, Energy Star — what actually applies

If you are building or remodeling in California you will hear five names in the same sentence, as if they were interchangeable. They are not. One of them is law. The others are programs, brands, or scoring systems you may opt into — or that a lender, a city reach code, or a HOA may require on top of the law.

Title 24 is the floor

Title 24, Part 6 is California’s Building Energy Efficiency Standards. It is adopted statewide and enforced by your local building department. New construction, most additions, many alterations, and HVAC changeouts have to show compliance on paper (the CF1R) and, for a long list of measures, in the field (HERS tests registered as CF3Rs).

When someone says “we need energy calcs,” they mean Title 24 documentation. Everything else in this article sits on top of that floor, or is a different way of talking about a piece of it.

HERS is the field test, not a lifestyle brand

HERS is the Home Energy Rating System. In California the rating you need for a permit is performed by a certified rater registered with a provider such as CalCERTS or CHEERS. The rater is a third party. They test duct leakage, envelope leakage, airflow, refrigerant charge, quality insulation installation, and a handful of other measures the energy code or the plans called out.

There is also a HERS index used nationally (a score where a typical resale home is 100 and a net-zero home approaches 0). That index is useful for programs and comparisons. It is not, by itself, your permit. Do not confuse a marketing HERS score with the CF3R the inspector is waiting on.

Energy Star, GreenPoint, LEED

• Energy Star for homes is an EPA program. It uses a HERS-style rating plus a checklist. In California it is almost always layered on top of Title 24, not a substitute for it.
• GreenPoint Rated is a Build It Green program used widely in California, especially on multifamily and local reach-code projects. It covers energy, water, IAQ, and materials.
• LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a USGBC certification. It is common on commercial and larger multifamily. It is a points system. It does not replace Title 24.

If a city, a tax-credit program, or an affordable-housing funder asks for GreenPoint or LEED, we can tell you how that overlaps with the HERS tests you were already going to run. The worst outcome is paying twice for the same blower-door test because nobody coordinated the raters.

What to do Monday morning

Start with the permit path. Ask the designer or the Title 24 author which HERS measures are triggered. Put a rater on the job before drywall, not after the insulation is buried. If a green program is in the mix, send us the checklist and we will mark the items that are already covered by the energy code so you are not testing the house three times.

Call 858-254-1189 if you want that conversation without the brochure language.