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Executive Summary
America is the largest consumer of energy in the world.The majority of this energy is derived from dirty, polluting sources such as coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. Our consumption of these fuels exacerbates global warming, keeps us dependent upon oil and other fossil fuels, and undermines our economy.
Forty percent of America’s energy—ten percent of all the energy used in the world—goes towards powering our buildings. Much of this energy is simply wasted through poor insulation, leaky windows, inefficient lighting, heating or cooling systems, and poor construction techniques. If we stay on our current unsustainable path, the energy we use in buildings will:
• Grow by 6.61 quadrillion British Thermal Units
(BTUs) between 2010 and 2030—a 16 percent increase,
or as much energy as is used to power 86 million
homes for 2 years;1
• Account for 43 percent of total U.S. energy consumption
by 2030, making us even more dependent
on imported and polluting fossil fuels;2 and
• Have increased emissions of carbon dioxide by
323.95 million metric tons, roughly equivalent to
the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 80 coal-fired
power plants.3
For us to make meaningful progress in reducing our energy consumption and our nation’s global warming emissions, we must use far less energy in our buildings. With approximately 75 percent of our buildings scheduled to be new or renovated by the year 2040,4 we have a huge opportunity to save energy.
By taking bold action to improve the energy efficiency of our nation’s buildings,
we can put America on track to meet our energy challenges and reduce our global warming emissions. President Obama has announced an ambitious but achievable goal of making all new buildings zero-net energy, or “zero energy”, by 2030.
The economic recovery bill recently passed by Congress has provided some much needed momentum, by providing more than $25 billion for weatherization, and energy efficiency upgrades for commercial and government buildings.5
Through ongoing investments in making our existing buildings more efficient and by committing to higher performing new buildings—which cut energy use in half within ten years and which should generate as much energy as they use by 2030—we can make major progress toward achieving energy independence, reducing
global warming emissions and improving our economy.
By adopting and implementing the following policies we can promote the construction of high performance, energy-efficient buildings:
• Improving and enforcing building energy codes.
National model code standards should require 30
percent greater efficiency by 2010 and 50 percent
greater efficiency by 2016, and state and local codes
should match or exceed the model codes. This would
ensure that the 2012 and 2018 code releases would
meet these targets;
• Adopting the President’s target of all new buildings
being zero energy by 2030; and
• Retrofitting all existing commercial and residential
buildings before the year 2030.
By 2030, America will see the following benefits from
adopting these policies:
• Saving 144 quadrillion BTUs, or enough energy to
power all of America’s homes, businesses, cars and
power plants for a year and a half;
• Preventing a total 11.2 billion metric tons of carbon
dioxide from being emitted, equivalent to nearly the
annual carbon dioxide emissions of the U.S. and
China combined;
• Paying back upfront costs in eleven years and netting
more than $542 billion in energy savings by
2031; and
• By 2050 we will have cut U.S. carbon emissions by
34 percent from projected levels—securing a major
portion of the reductions necessary to meet the
nation’s target of 80 percent cuts in global warming
emissions below 2005 levels by 2050.
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