The bill would require new homes to immediately be 30% more energy efficient. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:
Transcript
This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:
The bill would require a re-write of building codes. New homes would immediately have to be 30% more energy efficient. And the requirements would keep getting tougher from there.
The idea is controversial. But for Alex Dean, building efficiently is just the way he does business.
“It’s building to a higher standard. And we really enjoy building fine projects for people who want it done right.”
Dean is the CEO of the Alexander Group, a home design, build and renovation firm in Maryland. He’s showing me around a green remodel.
(sound of key in door)
“This is the entry from the garage into the new addition.”
Dean and his team are putting an addition on a home in an upscale Washington, DC suburb.
He’s designed every detail with an eye to energy efficiency, starting with the insulation. He used a spray foam. It costs about twice as much as the insulation required by current building codes.
“You know, it’s worth it, and in the overall scheme of building the house, it’s not that much money.”
On this hot humid day, you can feel the difference the fancy insulation makes.
Keith: “It’s cooler than it is outside.
Dean: “Yeah, yeah.”
Keith: “And there’s no AC running in here right now.”
Dean: “No, not at all. And this building is directly in the sun. But that’s how effective this is. This is keeping some of the coolness from last night when it was in the 60s.”
That means he can install smaller heating and air conditioning units that use less energy.
The windows are double paned. The lights, all compact fluorescents or super efficient LEDs.
It’s projects like this one that make Bill Fay confident home builders will be able to handle greener building codes. Fay is the executive director of the Building Energy Efficient Codes Network.
“We know it’s achievable. And we know it’s achievable using affordable technologies. It’s just now a matter to have the resolve to do it.”
Past efforts at greening the building codes met with stiff opposition from home builders and failed to make it through congress.
Koteri Callahan is president of the Alliance to Save Energy and she says the stakes are high. Buildings are huge energy wasters.
“Every house and every office building that goes in the ground today is going to be around for decades and decades and in some cases centuries.”
But these days, the ground isn’t being broken on very many homes. The industry is in a serious slump.
Bill Kilmer is the head of advocacy for the National Association of Home Builders and he doesn’t want members of congress to forget about the industry’s struggles.
“Consumers certainly in the last year are stepping back and said, ‘what can we afford.’ And so we’re trying to take a mainstream, if you will, that says, ‘people want this.’ How can we get to that point, and how can we get there reasonably, and take afford-ability into account.”
Kilmer says the building industry is taking environmental issues seriously, and recently created a voluntary green building certification program.
But, he says the House bill moves too far too fast. He says builders would like until 2012 to meet the 30% efficiency goal.
“You really don’t have the equipment or the materials that are ready and ramped up to make the adjustments in the marketplace to bring those things to bear, without a tremendous cost burden that’ll be added on to the production of the housing and that obviously is going to be passed on to someone, and that’ll be the consumer.”
This question of affordability is a big one. And it seems like everyone has a statistic to make their point.
For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.