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Executive Summary
America is the largest consumer of energy in the world. Almost half of the
energy we use—10 percent of the energy in the world—powers our buildings. Most
of this energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Our reliance on these fuels
makes us vulnerable to supply disruptions, contributes to global warming and
other environmental problems, and is becoming increasingly expensive.
We could be using far less energy in our buildings. Homes and businesses
exist that use a fraction of the energy of typical buildings—some also generate
100 percent or more of the energy needed to power them on-site, using renewable
sources such as wind and solar power.
Approximately 75 percent of our buildings will be new or renovated by the
year 2035. Although this situation represents huge potential for saving energy,
market barriers are preventing the widespread adoption of energy-efficient
building practices.
Those barriers include:
• Many construction and home building firms resist the marginally higher
upfront costs of actions to improve building efficiency and therefore are slow
to adopt measures that would benefit renters and home and building owners.
• Buyers and renters lack the information needed to choose more
energy-efficient properties.
Policies can be adopted to overcome these barriers and ensure that new
buildings and renovations take advantage of energy-efficient practices, such
as:
• Building energy codes should be improved and enforced. National model
codes should be 30 percent more efficient by 2010 and state codes should match
or exceed the model codes.
• Federal, state, and local governments should adopt policies that encourage
building far beyond code and retrofitting existing buildings for increased
efficiency.
• Policies should be designed to encourage on-site renewable power.
• Political leaders should set the goal for all new buildings to be zero net
energy by 2030.
These policy changes would have a huge impact on energy use and global
warming emissions in the United States, at little cost.
• Adopting and enforcing strong building codes nationally could reduce our
annual energy consumption by 2 percent from 2030 projected use.
• Investments of $21.6 billion a year for five years through federal
efficiency programs could reduce our energy use enough to replace more than 100
coal-fired power plants and lower annual carbon dioxide emissions by 433.5 MMT.
• One quad of energy gained through building efficiency would cost $42.1
billion, 35 percent of the cost to gain the same amount of energy through new
coal plants, and under 20 percent of the cost to gain the same amount of energy
through new nuclear generation.
Half of the buildings constructed today will still be in use in the middle
of this century. The decisions we make today will have a lasting effect on our
energy economy.
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