Zero Energy Homes
Founding and growing Zero Energy Homes allows me to combine several of the things I’m passionate about: climate and solar energy, healthier, more local materials, and community development.
–Caroline Pryor, President, Zero Energy Homes
Building a Scalable Model for Affordable, Solar-Powered Homes
Maine is projected to need more than 80,000 new housing units over the next five years, while many potential homebuyers are looking for more cost-effective options. Zero Energy Homes is working to meet that need by delivering affordable, high-quality homes built with at least 80% Maine and regional building materials. The homes are comfortable, modern, healthy, and designed to have little to no energy costs. That approach aligns with state efforts to support clean energy and economic development through businesses that use Maine’s natural resources.
Founded in 2023 as an LLC, Zero Energy Homes launched as a worker-owned cooperative in December 2025. The company’s homes are priced to be accessible to year-round residents earning from 80% to 160% of their area median income.
Rethinking How Homes Are Built
Zero Energy Homes is developing a new model for how homes are designed, sourced, financed, produced, and delivered. The company currently uses off-site panelization and is preparing to use off-site modular manufacturing at a facility in Wiscasset. Modular construction offers production efficiencies that can create meaningful cost savings and higher-quality, precision-built homes. Zero Energy Homes intends to use the manufacturing process as a platform for bringing Maine-developed technologies and innovations into broader operational use.
Its approach also supports Maine’s forest products economy. The Zero Energy Homes supply chain creates a stable demand for local products and supports both rural Maine economies and conservation of Maine forests through viable sustainable forestry.
Zero Energy Homes has shown that a single-family home in Maine can be built with more than 80% Maine and regional materials and labor while remaining attainable for year-round residents. The model brings together housing access, clean energy, rural economic development, and sustainable working forests.
5
homes built or currently under construction
18,000 sq ft
leased for modular home production in Wiscasset
18 customers
provided deposits on home builds; 39% are homebuyers earning less than area median income
$100,000+
estimated lifetime savings from the Osprey model in Maine’s most competitive housing markets
80%+
Maine materials and labor
MTI’s Role in Moving the Business Forward
As Zero Energy Homes prepared to enter the market, Maine’s housing landscape changed significantly. Home prices rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring the company to revise its strategy, absorb new expenses, and rebuild its path toward a demonstration home and customer pipeline.
Support from MTI helped the company regain momentum. Through PRIME 2, Zero Energy Homes fast-tracked the hire of Vice President of Operations Steve Eaton to lead a statewide search for a manufacturing facility, capture lessons from the completion of the Searsport demonstration home, and develop a home estimation tool. Through the MERC program, the company worked with Dream Local Digital to create a go-to-market plan rooted in customer analytics, digital advertising, website SEO, and market segmentation. MTI’s Business Innovation Funding is also supporting work to advance pre-cast home foundations, with the objective of lowering costs, aligning home and foundation production, increasing project speed, and reducing concrete use and transport.
That support helped Zero Energy Homes validate its housing and financial model, bring its home product to market with essential support from the home estimation tool, and begin building homes. The company established a sales process, leased an 18,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Wiscasset, grew its marketing channels, and built a customer pipeline well into 2027.
Expanding Access to Healthy, Efficient Homes
The customer response has reinforced the need Zero Energy Homes set out to address. Many Mainers value the company’s focus on comfortable, healthy, solar-powered homes, especially when paired with Maine and regional materials and a more attainable price point.
Zero Energy Homes has completed or begun building five homes in Searsport, Brooksville, Trenton, Gorham, and Westport Island. Its Osprey demonstration home in Searsport was sold to a homebuyer earning 80% of the area median income. The company also completed an economic analysis showing that the Osprey model has achieved cost competitiveness against the median home on the market in most of Maine while providing more than $100,000 in lifetime heat and electric savings to customers in Maine’s most competitive housing markets.
Scaling a Maine-Based Housing Model
Over the next five years, Zero Energy Homes plans to ramp up production to 50 homes per year using off-site modular construction. The company expects to employ approximately 40 people, with voluntary opportunities for employees to become worker-owners of the cooperative. The cooperative structure ensures that when the company achieves profitability, economic benefits will remain with Maine workers and in Maine communities.
Zero Energy Homes is strongly committed to supporting underserved constituencies through its housing production and employee-ownership opportunities. The company is developing new pathways to help homebuyers finance a home and plans to expand into underserved markets, including Indigenous, veteran, and immigrant communities, mobile home replacements, resident-owned community expansions, and multifamily designs. By combining affordable housing, solar energy, modular construction, and Maine-based materials, Zero Energy Homes is working to show how local innovation can address urgent housing, climate, and economic development challenges.
