A week ago, fossil fuel companies pulled off an 11th-hour win in their fight to keep climate-friendly measures out of the next national homebuilding guidelines, successfully lobbying the private entity that writes the country’s model building codes to strip out rules that would make it cheaper for homeowners to go electric. Democrats in Congress called the gas industry’s influence over the International Code Council’s process “a real scandal.” Now some Republicans want to go further to prevent the U.S. from cutting back on wasted electricity and heat, even as Americans struggle to pay rising energy bills and utility debt hits record highs. The two top House Republicans tasked with overseeing the Department of Energy are putting pressure on the agency to slow down programs meant to help states and cities adopt the new codes - which are, even after fossil fuel companies’ lobbying efforts, the most energy-efficient ones the ICC has ever written. “We are concerned that the DOE’s building codes grant programs will exacerbate the current housing affordability crisis and limit energy choices for the American people by encouraging the adoption of such one-sized-fits-all building codes that are not appropriate or cost-effective for all income levels and regions of the country,” wrote Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), who leads the panel’s subcommittee on the energy grid. Their letter is the latest sign that the wonky, highly-technical process of updating the building codes that for three decades have provided American real estate developers across the country with some degree of uniformity are being dragged into partisan culture wars. The U.S. has no official national building code. Instead, states and cities choose which and when third-party standards to codify into law. For example, Illinois adopts the new ICC codes when they’re released... |