Codes of conduct

Seattle’s LEED-Silver public library.

Concerns about climate change, dwindling energy supplies and rising operating costs are driving business and policymakers at all levels to focus on making significant changes to codes in the building sector—the nation’s leading carbon emissions contributor and energy consumer.

Voluntary programs such as U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system brought awareness to and created a market for energy- and resource-efficient buildings.
However, the number of buildings participating in voluntary programs is “miniscule” compared to the number of new buildings under construction, says Lisa Richmond, executive director of the Seattle branch of American Institute of Architects (AIA). “We have to address energy conservation through a regulatory framework,” Richmond says.

As of 2007, only 3 percent of commercial buildings met a minimum LEED standard, according to USGBC. In light of this harsh reality, many in the industry are pressuring policymakers to adopt regulatory frameworks to compel broader adoption of energy efficiency requirements and greener construction standards.

“The building sector is in a paradigm shift in the United States. There is no longer an elitist group of people working on green building issues, the mainstream is now working on them,” says Tom Phillips, city of Salem, Ore. building official and vice president of Oregon’s Building Officials Association. Organizations such as New Buildings Institute (NBI), AIA and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are all pushing for code changes at the national level that would drastically upgrade efficiency requirements for new construction and create consistency across state borders.

“Architects practice across the country and it can be very confusing to have a checkerboard code environment,” Richmond says. “The challenge at the national level is to adopt standards that are palatable enough to be universally deployable.”

International energy conservation code
The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), which has been adopted whole or in part by 25 states and is the baseline minimum for all jurisdictions with energy efficiency codes and green building certifications, is up for a major overhaul. A proposed change known as EC147 aims to update the IECC to require that buildings be designed to be up to 30 percent more energy efficient than is currently required under IECC’s 2006 model code.