Stronger building energy codes and incentives could lead to dramatic energy savings in buildings

From a Building an energy-efficient America: Zero energy and high efficiency buildings issued by Wisconsin Environment:

Approximately 75 percent of our buildings will be new or renovated by the year 2035. Although this situation represents huge potential for saving energy, market barriers are preventing the widespread adoption of energy-effi cient building practices.

Those barriers include:
• Many construction and home building firms resist the marginally higher upfront costs of actions to improve building effi ciency and therefore are slow to adopt measures that would benefit renters and home and building owners.

• Buyers and renters lack the information needed to choose more energy-efficient properties.

Policies can be adopted to overcome these barriers and ensure that new buildings and renovations take advantage of energy-effi cient practices, such as:

• Building energy codes should be improved and enforced. National model codes should be 30 percent more efficient by 2010 and state codes should match or exceed
the model codes.

• Federal, state, and local governments should adopt policies that encourage building far beyond code and retrofitting existing buildings for increased efficiency.

• Policies should be designed to encourage on-site renewable power.

• Political leaders should set the goal for all new buildings to be zero net energy by 2030.

These policy changes would have a huge impact on energy use and global warming emissions in the United States, at little cost.

• Adopting and enforcing strong building codes nationally
could reduce our annual energy consumption by 2 percent from 2030 projected use.

• Investments of $21.6 billion a year for five years through federal efficiency programs could reduce our energy use enough to replace more than 100 coal-fi red power plants and lower annual carbon dioxide emissions by 433.5 MMT.

• One quad of energy gained through building efficiency would cost $42.1 billion, 35 percent of the cost to gain the same amount of energy through new coal plants, and
under 20 percent of the cost to gain the same amount of energy through new nuclear generation.

Half of the buildings constructed today will still be in use in the middle of this century.The decisions we make today will have a lasting effect on our energy economy.