03/29/2024

Building Codes Don’t Save Electricity … or Do They?

High temperatures drive up peak electricity demand which drives up investment in costly power lines and power plants. Looking ahead, it will be important to better understand the relationship between hot weather and energy demand as system operators gear up for climate change.

The relationship between heat and electricity demand can also help us look back in time to assess some demand-side investments we’ve already made. A new working paper uses this relationship to estimate energy savings from California’s building energy codes.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might be having a déjà vu moment. Haven’t we tackled the “Do California building codes actually save energy?” question before? Do we really need to go down this path again? The answer is yes and yes.  This paper shows how ‘big data’ can shed new light on this old (but still relevant) question.

Do Building Energy Codes Save Energy?

If you are looking for a landmark energy efficiency program to evaluate, California’s Title 24  is a good place to start. It boldly went where no building code had gone before, and it has provided an energy efficiency model/inspiration for the nation and the world.

The original Title 24 code (circa 1977) for new buildings was designed to reduce the energy required to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. Given the size of the projected energy savings (significant for electricity, even larger for natural gas), we might expect to see an impact on energy consumption when we look at energy use today in homes built just before and just after these codes took effect. But annual electricity consumption at California homes built in the early 1980s is slightly higher, on average, as compared to homes built just before Title 24 was implemented.

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