Shocked, Shocked!! Homebuilders' Associations Fighting Against Any Increase In Energy Efficiency Codes
“Out in the middle of nowhere” in Moore County, N.C., developer Ron Jackson said he is building what America needs — more affordable homes for the nurses, police officers and teachers struggling to find housing they can afford amid a nationwide shortage. That’s why Jackson and others from North Carolina’s home building industry say they came out in force last year against a state plan to tighten energy efficiency building codes so new homes would waste less energy, reducing their carbon footprints. The builders succeeded in blocking the new standards, helping to maintain the status quo.
“All that energy code was going to do in my price range is make it to where the working man and woman would not be able to buy a home,” Jackson said. He sells homes in the $250,000 range and estimated the changes would have increased his costs by more than $20,000 — a figure that comes from a survey of North Carolina builders conducted by the state branch of the National Association of Home Builders, the housing industry’s largest lobbying group.
Across the country, the home builder lobby is mobilizing its 140,000 members against state and local efforts to save energy and ease the transition to cleaner technologies, such as wiring homes to support electric car charging. Since poorly designed and insulated buildings tend to leak and waste energy — one reason homes account for nearly one-fifth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — climate advocates say the home builders’ repeated victories will have a lasting impact, locking in practices that could hurt consumers and the planet for decades.
There’s no debate that boosting the energy efficiency of new homes often increases upfront costs, but the builders appear to be inflating the numbers. A federal study found that North Carolina’s proposed code update would have added at most about $6,500 to the price of a newly built home, not $20,400. According to the analysis, these changes would have paid for themselves through lower power bills and, during the first year alone, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of taking 29,000 cars off the road.
EDIT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/21/homebuilders-energy-efficiency-climate/
Yes, it always comes down to those poor suffering buyers, who can't possibly afford another nickel of potentially higher costs. And the builders and developers are so concerned.
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