Green Building Law Blog

On Friday, Senator Barbara Boxer released a 923-page climate change and energy bill.  A draft of the bill had been leaked to the media in late September, and I discussed it here. 

Although the overall bill has swelled from 600+ pages to 900+ pages, there is still just 1.5 pages on the National Energy Efficiency Building Code, first proposed as Section 201of the Waxman-Markey Bill.  In the Waxman-Markey Bill, the House called for: 

1. Establishing a “national energy efficiency building code” for residential and commercial buildings, sufficient to meet each of the national building code energy efficiency targets.

2. Setting energy efficiency targets for the national building code: “on the date of enactment of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, 30 percent reduction in energy use relative to a comparable building constructed in compliance with the baseline code…effective January 1, 2014, for residential buildings, and January 1, 2015, for commercial buildings, 50 percent reduction in energy use relative to the baseline code; and…January 1, 2017, for residential buildings, and January 1, 2018, for commercial buildings, and every 3 years thereafter, respectively, through January 1, 2029, and January 1, 2030, 5 percent additional reduction in energy use relative to the baseline code.”

3. If consensus based codes provides for greater reduction in energy use than is required under the ACESA, the overall percentage reduction in energy use provided by that successor code shall be the national building code energy efficiency target.

4. Requiring that states and local governments comply with or exceed the national energy efficiency building code, and providing for enforcement mechanisms for states which are out of compliance.

The original Boxer-Kerry draft backed off of the Waxman-Markey structure entirely, simply mandating that the Department of Energy or "other agency head or heads as may be designated by the President shall promulgate regulations establishing building code energy efficiency targets...beginnning not later than January 1, 2014... "

The exact same language is mirrored in the current version of the Senate Bill at Section 163 (starting at page 200 of the current bill).  No structure, no mandatory energy efficiency targets, no requirments that states adopt energy efficiency codes by a certain date.  

This is a fascinating development because of the vast energy savings possible through regulation of new buildings and retrofits of old buildings.  According to a study by McKinsey on energy efficiency,

by 2020, the United States could reduce annual energy consumption by 23 percent from a business-as-usual projection by deploying an array of...efficiency measures, saving 9.1 quadrillion BTUs of end use energy...

The majority of the 900 page bill is dedicated to defining and establishing a cap-and-trade program.  While a worthy goal, I think that the Boxer bill misses the opportunity to grasp low-hanging fruit in energy savings through energy efficient building requirements.