Tom Piekarski

"We're just scratching the surface right now as far as green building in this area," said Tom Piekarski, owner of Concordia Homes in Dracut, which specializes in energy-efficient construction.Piekarski is also president of the North East Builders Association of Massachusetts.

He agreed that "If you're 100 percent profit-driven it's going to be hard to do because there aren't customers out there in droves buying green buildings."

Without using the term "green building," Tom Piekarski, owner of Dracut-based Concordia Homes and president of the North East Builders Association of Massachusetts, said his home-building firm has been incorporating energy-efficient insulation and other construction materials into its relatively small subdivisions since 2000, as prescribed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program.

Piekarski, a member of the study advisory committee, said he has seen "a small demand starting to build up" for Energy Star homes.