State officials believe builders are less likely to sue over the changes to how homes and commercial buildings are made
Colorado cities that update building codes beginning next year must match or exceed a new model of codes from a state board that emphasizes clean energy and efficiency in home and commercial building and renovation.
“Buildings are one of the five largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution in the state,” Colorado Energy Office chief Will Toor said. “And so in order to achieve our state climate goals of cutting greenhouse gas pollution in half by 2030, and moving towards net-zero emissions by 2050, you have to reduce pollution from buildings. The easiest and most cost effective way to do that is to build buildings right from the start, as opposed to having to come in later and do remodels.”
The new standards launch July 1. They were adapted from 2024 international standards by a state energy codes board set up by 2022 legislation, made up of a wide range of builders, clean energy advocates, local code officials and others. They will not outlaw new natural gas hookups for furnaces and appliances, as some have advocated to cut back on climate change gases, Toor said. Instead, they will incentivize clean electrification such as electric heat and cooling pumps and induction ranges through a scoring system that gives more credit to alternatives and efficiency.
On top of attacking global emissions issues and cleaning indoor air often polluted by burning fossil fuels, Toor said, the updated codes should give consumers more cost certainty by giving up reliance on natural gas supplies whose price can fluctuate wildly as happened in the 2021 winter storm Uri.
“We know that energy costs are a big part of affordable living,” Toor said.
State officials expect the new codes to be less controversial than a separate initiative called “building performance.” The state and some cities like Denver have passed rules requiring major renovations of existing large buildings that are meant to cut energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from a benchmark established by an initial building audit.
Builders and building managers have sued over those measures, citing enormous costs for everything from new windows to furnaces.
But the largest homebuilder trade groups have opposed state-written energy codes since the 2022 legislative debate, saying they will add thousands of dollars in costs to each new home
Some municipalities are already trying to enforce it. Some of it is really dumb like mandatory use of switches that are either dimmers or motion detectors for residential buildings. Customers don’t want motion detectors in their living room, etc and dimmers don’t save energy, they expel the excess as heat. That’s already gone over like a turd here.
Where the hell did you hear that about dimmer switches? That was true years ago but not a single person is installing those on new construction.
Work in the industry. Literally had an inspector fail us for not following IECC on a service call.
I meant “turning the excess into heat”.
Because that’s old style rheostats. New ones use triacs. And then there are the ones that directly talk to LED bulbs but I have no clue if those are compliant with code.