ICC Officials Vote Down Efficiency Improvements

The International Code Council (ICC), an organization focused on building safety and fire prevention, disappointed the green building community when it voted in late September 2005 not to adopt member-ratified changes to the 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) that would have strengthened standards for wall insulation. The changes would have saved more than $7 billion and 500 trillion Btus (530 million GJ) of energy over 30 years, according to an assessment conducted by Bion Howard, president of Building Environmental Science and Technology, and William Prindle, deputy director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The changes were proposed in response to a format change in the 2004 IECC that decouples wall insulation requirements from window area, introducing the potential for homes to be less efficient than they would have been under the 2003 IECC, according to the ACEEE report. “The wall improvements in question—from R-13 to R-15 in zones 3 and 4 and from R-19 to R-21 in zones 5, 4 Marine, and 6—were included in the major overhaul of the IECC that was approved by the IECC Committee in 2003 and overwhelmingly ratified by the membership in 2004.” The vote to reject the upgraded insulation standards came as a surprise to most observers.