news-record.com

From the lede in a story for today’s paper.

RALEIGH — New regulations that would have required houses built in North Carolina to be 30 percent more energy efficient than current models have been delayed following a vote by the state’s Building Code Council earlier this month.

The principal objections to the new regulations came from homebuilders, particularly the N.C. Home Builders Association, which said increased costs associated with the energy-efficiency measures would make houses harder to sell in the sluggish economy. Advocates for the new rules said any increase in mortgage costs would be offset by lower energy bills.

There is some prospect the rules could be revisited — and Gov. Bev Perdue has pledged the state will move faster — but the future of the rules is far from clear despite previous commitments by state officials.

North Carolina accepted a $500,000 grant in 2008 to rewrite the energy section of its building code. In 2009, Perdue signed a letter that promised, among other things, to carry through with the revision in exchange for $79 million in federal stimulus spending related to energy programs.

“It’s going to get done, not eventually, but sooner rather than later,” Perdue said Tuesday, adding she expected the revision in the next 12 months.

The whole thing is in our e-edition (link).  (There’s a free trial if you’ve never logged into it before.)

The Building Code Council (link) is not a branch of state government that tends to get a lot of attention except when they’re developing regulations that folks find to be controversial. The last time that happened was about a year ago when they were dealing with circuit breakers.

In this case, the council voted 8-6 to delay the energy efficiency standards. As I describe in the story, these standards basically would have required builders to do a lot of little things when they construct new housing. Each of those little things – sealing cracks, putting in better windows, using programmable thermostats, etc… – wouldn’t make a huge different all on their own. But they add up.

The code would have also revised commercial building standards, although as far as I can tell the opposition to this is on the home builders’ front.

The N.C. Home Builders Association (link) have said that now is not the right time to make houses costs more. It’s already hard for folks to get a mortgage and putting additional costs up front will make that mortgage even tougher to land. Advocates for the rules say that the up front costs will be offset by long term energy savings and be repaid over five years.

One of the most interesting aspects of this is the varying estimates on how much the energy efficiency measures would supposedly cost. Experts with Appalachian State University and consultants to the council fixed the price at something like $2,400. But the Home Builders told me Monday that they thought it was closer to $11,000 and in an e-mail floating about among people interested in this topic a home builder rep fixes the price as high as $22,000.

The home builders’ arguments won the day, although there is some rumbling the council may take the code back up again before the 2015 code cycle. Gov. Bev Perdue certainly said on the record that she wanted them too, and since all the members of the board are gubernatorial appointees one would think that counts for something.

Home Builders lobbyist Lisa Martin said her group was “committed” to helping get the energy code done. She talked a lot about the need to retrofit older homes, which do in fact waste a lot of electricity. But that strikes me as a separate issue from what to do with new homes. (Both could be done at once and policies dealing with one thing don't necessarily trod on the other.) She also pointed to a way forward in which homebuilders might support the rewrite of the energy code if the state were willing to roll back other parts of the building code to compensate. Such rollbacks would mitigate costs that could then be put into the energy efficiency measures.

For those interested in some more background material, here are some links:

• A list of the Build Code Council board members as the group is currently appointed.
   
• A summary of the building code upgrades that came from the council’s staff.
   
• A longer summary report focusing just on the residential aspect of the potential code changes.
   
• A letter from Gov. Bev Perdue to federal DOE Sec. Steven Chu in which she says North Carolina will – among other things – rewrite the energy code in exchange for drawing down $79 million in federal stimulus funds.
   
• A Powerpoint slide show (converted to PDF) by energy consultant Chris Mathis that explains why folks on his side of the equation think the code rewrite is a good idea.