The 29 most important pages of the Waxman-Markey climate bill
Posted on | July 23, 2009 | No Comments
Ed Mazria is a bit of a legend in the Architecture and design community. He’s been in practice forever; he wrote a big, fat book all about energy-saving passive design in the 70′s entitled The Passive Solar Energy Book; and he’s the driving force behind the organization known as Architecture 2030. Basically, when Ed talks, I pay attention.
Which is why, in my most recent e-newsletter from Architecture 2030, I was pleased and not surprised to discover that they had spent so much time poring over the 1428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House of Representatives. I am going to take Ed’s word for it, as I do not have the energy (or enough caffeine) to read a 1428-page bill, when he tells me that the 29 most important pages of the bill are contained in Section 201, which requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:
- in 2010, 30% below the baseline energy code (IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 90.1-2004),
- in 2014-2015, 50% below the baseline energy code, and
- every three years after, out to 2029-2030, an additional 5% reduction.
Simply put, this is totally awesome. If designers and architects are going achieve lower energy buildings, we are going to need the building codes to be our guides, because our clients usually won’t pay for it on their own. This is starting to change, certainly, but frankly there are not a whole lot of people in the building industry that are getting paid for anything right now. This portion of the bill will not only regulate new construction, but it will encourage people who can’t afford new buildings to reconsider renovation as a viable option. And both of these things NEED to happen: new construction should be more energy efficient, while renovation should happen on a broader scale. The GOOD NEWS is, clients, developers, and builders need to work openly with architects, designers and engineers to make this happen. Which means, everybody gets back to work!
To read more about the awesomeness of energy efficiency in buildings and the implications of this climate bill, read the complete analysis (with fun graphs and everything) in Architecture 2030′s latest e-newsletter.
Tags: architecture > business > design > efficient > energy > jobs > passive > politics > Renovation > saving > solar
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