Austin Adopts Updated Energy Conservation Code
New code will aid efficiency and electrification
By Kaiba White
The Austin City Council recently adopted the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for new residential and commercial buildings. The IECC is a set of standards that ensures buildings are constructed to be energy-efficient and support the transition to clean energy. For building occupants, it provides the freedom to choose to affordably phase out fossil fuels in buildings and transportation. The new code will also allow for more flexibility in how builders meet energy efficiency standards and reduce overall living costs in new buildings.
Energy efficiency gains are made in large part due to improvements to reduce air leakage out of homes and commercial buildings. Tightly sealed buildings are better at keeping cool air on one side of the wall and warm air on the other and thus take less energy to heat and cool. This will save occupants of new homes and commercial properties money on energy bills and keep temperatures in the livable range for longer when the next power outage happens. (NOTE: While the new energy code will only yield benefits for new buildings, Austin Energy also has energy efficiency programs to assist with insulating and sealing existing buildings. For low-income customers, the weatherization program provides many upgrades for free.)
Electric readiness provisions that are new with the 2024 IECC will make it much easier and affordable for future building occupants to choose to switch from natural gas to electric appliances. When homes are constructed with natural gas water heaters, cook stoves, central heating and clothes dryers, they generally aren’t wired to allow for electric appliances. It leaves future property owners – including me – with the choice of sticking with a polluting fossil fuel or paying thousands of dollars for an electrician to install the necessary circuits. And sometimes the electric panel and even the electric service (which determines the amount of electricity that can be provided to a building at any given time) can also require costly and time-consuming upgrades.
Whether a property owner wants to switch to an electric appliance to save money on bills, reduce their impact on climate change, eliminate the single biggest source of indoor air pollution (a natural gas stove), improve safety in the home, or just take advantage of newer and better technologies, we should be able to do so without hiring an electrician. Doing the necessary wiring and ensuring that the electric service and electric panel can accommodate electric appliances is much cheaper when a building is being constructed. With this new code, buildings will be built to accommodate those future choices.
Electric vehicle (EV) readiness provisions in the 2024 IECC will make installing EV chargers in the future easier and cheaper. As with swapping out natural gas appliances for electric appliances, adding an EV charger to a home or business generally comes with the cost of an electrician installing the proper wiring and perhaps upgrade the electric service and electric panel. New homes will now be built to accommodate EV chargers. And a portion of parking spaces at commercial buildings will have the necessary infrastructure to easily accommodate future EV chargers. This will allow more people to choose EVs, which is positive for climate change and local air pollution.
Renewable energy and energy storage requirements are also new in the 2024 IECC. For larger commercial buildings that meet certain criteria, including having sufficient unshaded roof space, on-site renewable energy will now be required. Commercial buildings will also be required to either install energy storage systems (EES) (i.e. batteries) or be EES-ready, which means designing and constructing the building’s electrical system to accommodate a minimum amount of energy storage later. These new requirements will add to Austin’s growing local solar capacity and enable future resilience by making it cheaper and easier to install batteries.
Affordability is improved overall with the adoption of the 2024 IECC. While some of the new requirements will increase building costs a bit, they are offset by reduced costs because of somewhat reduced attic insulation requirements and by energy savings over time. Single-family homes would see both an overall reduction in construction costs and an increase in annual energy savings. For low-rise residential buildings, construction costs will be slightly higher, but annual energy savings will make up for those costs in about five years. For mid-rise and high-rise buildings, increased building costs will be offset by energy savings in about 14 to 15 years, or even sooner with on-site solar production.
Climate goals are advanced with the 2024 IECC. Reducing energy needs to heat and cool buildings is essential for enabling the transition away from fossil fuels. So is increasing the use of on-site renewable energy and energy storage systems, as well as demand response. And making it cheaper and easier for future building occupants to choose electric appliances and install electric vehicle charging are key to enabling beneficial electrification. Residential buildings built to the 2024 IECC standards will have greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 4.6-6.7%.
Where next?
The City of Austin made a smart choice by adopting the 2024 IECC, including the electric readiness, EV-ready and renewable energy appendices. We hope to see other Texas cities follow this good example. The benefits are significantly greater for the many parts of Texas currently using the 2015 IECC.
If you want to nudge your town or city to adopt the 2024 IECC, send me an email at kwhite@citizen.org and put “2024 IECC for my town” in the subject line.