A new infographic published this week highlights the surprisingly robust return on investment homeowners achieve when buying an energy-efficient home. The graphic includes a detailed estimate of the cost of complying with the 2021 IECC, estimated at $7,200 nationally for a single-family home. The graphic also details that every dollar invested in energy efficiency saves the homeowner $3 in monthly energy costs.
Details »As the remnants of Hurricane Idalia pummeled the East Coast, this week it’s becoming clear that property owners may feel the resulting impacts for months or even years. The devastation underscores the importance of strong building codes and code enforcement as a front-line defense against increasingly extreme weather events. As climate change increases the scale and severity of natural disasters, strong building codes will save billions in repairs, according to a recently published Scientific American article.
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If you follow building energy efficiency code development and implementation at all, then you know that builders in North Carolina oppose efforts to modernize the state’s outdated energy efficiency code. That code is largely unchanged from the 2009 IECC, and the North Carolina Home Builders Association is fighting to keep it that way.
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Lumber costs have skyrocketed in recent years. In addition, more stringent building energy efficiency requirements mean more builders are interested in advanced framing. The key to advanced framing success lies in the details for areas like corners, wall intersections, and around windows.
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The Biden Administration on Wednesday announced a national initiative to advance building codes. The effort is designed to help state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments adopt the latest, current building codes and standards. Doing so, it says, will boost resilience to hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, and other extreme weather events, which are intensifying because of climate change. The added benefit is lower utility bills, especially for underserved communities.
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Responsible for nearly 40 percent of global climate emissions, buildings are critical to the government’s response to climate change. As lawmakers and climate advocates look for new policies that will curb greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment, the old rallying cry for energy efficiency is being replaced by calls for policies that drive building decarbonization. This leads to the question, just where does energy efficiency fit in this broader goal of decarbonization?
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The International Code Council (ICC) and RESNET have teamed up to develop a new ANSI Standard on remote virtual inspections (RVI) for buildings’ energy and water use performance. The standard will be developed using RESNET’s ANSI-accredited procedures and will be based on the ICC’s “Recommended Practices for Remote Virtual Inspections.”
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The U.S. housing market saw a record low supply of homes for sale at 1.16 million in April, down 25 percent from the prior year. With demand driven by the lowest fixed mortgage rates in 50 years, a current housing shortage at 4 million homes nationwide,[1] and higher costs for building materials, land, and labor, any home building option that promises to speed construction while reducing costs is attractive. Enter 3D printed homes – an efficient, cost-effective, and resilient option for new home construction.
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy recently issued a preliminary analysis of the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), noting that the code will improve energy efficiency in residential buildings. DOE’s technical analysis of the updated code (relative to the 2018 IECC edition) pegs national savings of approximately:
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This month’s extreme cold snap in Texas and resulting failure of the state’s power grid offers some important lessons in the rear-view mirror. This week, we look at three takeaways from this month’s crisis and how we can better prepare for the next one.
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