{"id":58388,"date":"2021-03-01T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=499899"},"modified":"2021-03-01T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T11:30:00","slug":"cities-voted-for-green-building-codes-now-developers-want-to-end-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/01\/cities-voted-for-green-building-codes-now-developers-want-to-end-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Cities voted for green building codes. Now developers want to end voting."},"content":{"rendered":"
This<\/em> story<\/em><\/a> was originally published by HuffPost<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and is reproduced here as part of the<\/em> Climate Desk<\/em><\/a> collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n Kim Havey had a problem. Minneapolis was generating more and more of its electricity from renewables, dropping climate-warming pollution from power to record lows. But emissions from natural gas, which is used to heat buildings and stovetops, were climbing \u2015 overtaking power plants as the city\u2019s top source<\/a> of carbon pollution in 2017.<\/p>\n Nearly three-quarters of Minneapolis\u2019 emissions came from buildings, and the city was undergoing a construction boom to accommodate a population growing faster than at any point since the 1950s. So Havey, the city\u2019s sustainability director, helped craft new rules mandating more efficient standards for all those new buildings.<\/p>\n But there was a hurdle. Buildings over 50,000 square feet \u2015 medical offices, corporate headquarters, apartment buildings \u2015 fell under state jurisdiction. And Minnesota, like most states, used the International Code Council\u2019s model national energy code as its standard. The ICC \u2015 which, as one newspaper once put it<\/a>, like the World Series, primarily concerns the U.S. \u2015 is a nonprofit consortium of construction industry groups, architects and local government officials that creates the standard building codes used in towns and cities in all 50 states.<\/p>\n Then Havey learned that as a government official responsible for buildings and energy codes in his city, he could register to vote on the ICC\u2019s next round of energy codes in November 2019. He wasn\u2019t alone in this endeavor. The slow progress in reducing emissions from buildings and a decade of virtually unchanged ICC codes were frustrating officials across the U.S., and hundreds applied that year to vote in a process that takes place every three years.<\/p>\n By the time votes were tallied, this army of Leslie Knopes had won an overwhelming victory. The ballots went 3 to 1 in favor of mandates to ratchet up energy efficiency and require new homes and buildings to include wiring to hook up electric vehicle chargers and electric appliances.<\/p>\n But the triumph was short-lived. The building industry groups that have long wielded dominance over policy at the ICC soon began challenging not only the approved measures, which they called costly and unrealistic, but the members\u2019 right to vote at all.<\/p>\n The National Association of Home Builders, whose influence over the ICC has drawn scrutiny<\/a> from Congress, demanded the organization reconsider the eligibility of dozens of city departments that cast ballots in 2019. Havey and his entire department were among them.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were taking this very seriously,\u201d Havey said. \u201cWe followed the process to the letter of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the ICC is deciding whether to end all future voting. A final decision from the nonprofit\u2019s executive board, which is made up of 18 government officials<\/a> from across the country, could come as early as next Wednesday.<\/p>\n The developers and building industry groups that want to end voting say doing so will help ensure the integrity of model energy codes, which they say were damaged with votes from misinformed government officials who don\u2019t understand building codes. Among the organizations that have backed the voting change are some of the nation\u2019s largest and most powerful industry lobbies, including Leading Builders of America, the American Gas Association and the National Association of Home Builders. They say the get-out-the-vote campaign that led to the biggest turnout in ICC voting history amounted to \u201cmanipulation\u201d by \u201cspecial interests.\u201d<\/p>\n But critics of changing the process \u2015 namely city officials, environmentalists and architects \u2015 say this was just the latest example of the building industry deploying its disproportionate influence over the ICC. The proposed change, they say, amounts to voter suppression and threatens to delegitimize the code itself, risking splintering the national standard if states and municipalities keen to reduce emissions stop using it.<\/p>\n When most people think of the pollution changing the planet\u2019s climate, the images that come to mind are billowing smokestacks at power plants or the smoggy haze that settles over traffic-jammed highways as exhaust pours from automobile tailpipes. Yet blocks of suburban homes and city skylines themselves may deserve similar attention. Buildings account for 40% of all energy consumed in the U.S. and a comparable portion<\/a> of greenhouse gases produced.<\/p>\n Buildings are also now increasingly the venue for the next big fight over climate policy. A growing number of cities are setting deadlines to ban natural gas in new construction. San Francisco, New York City and Seattle are three of the latest. That has led some states to push back. Last year, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee all passed state laws barring their cities from exacting such bans. Another 12 states \u2015 Arkansas<\/a>, Colorado<\/a>, Florida<\/a>, Georgia<\/a>, Indiana<\/a>, Iowa<\/a>, Kansas<\/a>, Kentucky<\/a>, Mississippi<\/a>, Missouri<\/a>, Texas<\/a>, and Utah<\/a> \u2015 are now considering preemption bills of their own, prodded<\/a> by lobbying and advertising campaigns<\/a> from gas utilities that see the hookup bans as an existential threat.<\/p>\nWhy pollution from buildings matters<\/strong><\/h3>\n