Green Building Law Blog

 It has been stated that building energy codes are the “quickest, cheapest and cleanest way to improve energy efficiency in the building sector.” 

Unfortunately, if the January 18, 2012 recommendations of the Uniform Construction Code Review and Advisory Council (the “Advisory Council”) go into effect, Pennsylvania will not adopt the 2012 updates to Pennsylvania’s building and energy codes. The Advisory Council voted to reject the 2012 model codes issued by the International Code Council (“ICC”) in their entirely, except for a few provisions regarding accessibility for the disabled. 

The Advisory Council also voted to recommend that the revision cycle for the Pennsylvania Construction Code be extended from three years, consistent with the international model code update schedule, to six years. If both the rejection of the 2012 codes and the extension of the code revision cycle go into effect, the 2009 codes will be in place until at least 2018, and Pennsylvania may miss out on the environmental and financial benefits of the 2012 code updates, and perhaps even the 2015 updates, as well.   

This means that much of Pennsylvania’s new construction for the foreseeable future will be less energy efficient than “state-of-the-art” construction, placing owners and tenants at a competitive disadvantage compared to forward-thinking neighboring jurisdictions like New York City, Washington DC, and Maryland. 

There is much more to this story.  The full article is available here