Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Campaigning for Better Building Codes

Campaigning for Better Building Codes

Matt Pearce
Campaign Specialist
U.S. Green Building Council

Earlier this month, USGBC launched our seventh and final campaign of the 2012 Advocacy Campaign Agenda: Build Better Codes. In this campaign, USGBC is calling on its community to actively engage in the greening of state and local building codes.

Building codes define a state or community’s minimum expectations for all buildings. As such, this campaign to build better, greener codes plays an important role in enabling market transformation towards a market norm of healthy, low-impact, responsible and efficient buildings and neighborhoods.

USGBC and many of its partners have long been active in developing a response to the demand for regulatory guidance for better, greener buildings. Building energy codes have filled some of the void, but fall far short of addressing the much broader spectrum of building-related risks to human and environmental health. State and local governments across the country will get their wish next week when the 2012 version of the International Green Construction Code (IgCC) is released. The IgCC, which includes ASHRAE Standard 189.1 as an optional path to compliance, serves to provide any code adopting body with the today’s best-available starting point for extending the benefits of green buildings to all buildings designed, built or renovated in a community.

With all this new material for code adopting bodies to consider – and many already are – USGBC’s Build Better Codes campaign calls on the full community of green building professionals to coach these codes from idea into reality. I hope you’ll join us in our effort to Build Better Codes.

http://usgbcblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/campaigning-for-better-building-codes.html?showComment=1334333054581#c5399078000029574105
We defiantly need a better building code and for our County Inspector to up hold our existing code and not be so lenient on some or most of the existing builders and people building with no license and working under someone’s license with no building knowledge in Thomasville, GA and South Georgia. It is not right that homes are being built below to bare minimum code.
http://www.capitalhomebuilders.com/Thomasville_Homes_Built.htm Images of homes in Thomas County being built bare to below minimum code by an unlicensed person working under someone else's building License in thomasville, GA. We believe this is one of the reasons homes in Thomasville, GA. are losing value. These homes being built by unqualified sub-contractors with cheap low end materials are hurting homes built right and built above minimum code.

As gas prices soar, studies tout energy efficiency

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
9:44 AM
 


By J. Scott Applewhite, AP
As gasoline prices soar, two new studies today highlight the nation's financial and environmental savings from an often overlooked source in the energy sector: efficiency.
Current efficiency standards for appliances, lighting and other equipment will save the United States the equivalent of two years of energy use or $1.1. trillion by 2035 and slash greenhouse gas emissions, concludes "The Efficiency Boom: Cashing In on Savings from Appliance Standards" report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the Appliance Standards Awareness Project.
"Our research found that a combination of updates for existing standards and first-time standards for products like computers, TV set-top boxes and street lights would add to the track record of big energy, economic and environmental benefits achieved by standards," said author and ACEEE analyst Amanda Lowenberger in announcing the findings.

A second study released today, by Environment America Research & Policy Center, finds that more energy efficiency buildings could save Americans families $450 each year in utility bills and cut the global warming pollution from buildings by 30%. It says this pollution cut is equal to taking 320 million cars off the road.

President Obama, criticized on the GOP presidential trail for rising gas prices, has embraced higher efficiency standards for not only products and buildings but also vehicles. He's proposed to nearly double the required fuel economy for cars and light trucks by 2025. Some companies have balked at the additional upfront costs, but energy efficiency has often garnered bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.


See photos of: Barack Obama, Congress, Ronald Reagan, Capitol Hill

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/index

Obama bypasses Congress again on climate change

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
12:04 PM
Add caption

 
By Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images
President Obama, who said last month that divisions in Congress are "too deep" to tackle climate change, bypassed Capitol Hill again this week with another effort to reduce climate-warming emissions.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Thursday, accompanied by officials from Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico and Sweden, a joint effort to curb the short-lived emissions of pollutants including soot (also called black carbon), methane and hydrofluorocarbons that account for 30% to 40% of global warming. The United States plans to contribute $12 million and Canada $3 million over two years to begin the project, which will be run by the United Nations Environment Program.

"One of the benefits of focusing on pollutants that are short-lived is, if we can reduce them significantly, we will have a noticeable effect on our climate in relatively short order," Clinton said at the State Department announcement. Scientists estimate that cutting these emissions can help prevent millions of deaths from pollution and lower global temperatures 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.