IMT and GBPN recognized three leaders in energy code compliance at this year’s International Code Council’s Annual Conference.
Washington, DC—October 17, 2013—This year at the International Code Council’s (ICC) Annual Conference in Atlantic City, N.J., the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) and the Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN) proudly recognized the winners of the Standard Bearers: Excellence in Energy Code Compliance Award. This award program, in its second year, honors state and local jurisdictions and individuals who have raised compliance with energy codes and achieved energy reduction in buildings using smart, cost-effective strategies.
The winners of the 2013 Standard Bearers Award are:
Georgia Department of Community Affairs
State-Level Winner
The City of Austin, Texas
Jurisdictional-Level Winner
Brent Ursenbach, Salt Lake County, Utah
Energy Code Champion
Strong building energy codes lay the foundation for how a building uses power and are one of the most effective tools for ensuring that buildings are energy efficient, inexpensive to operate, and healthy and comfortable for occupants. While many states and counties have adopted stronger energy codes in recent years, there remains a lack of funding for efforts to ensure compliance with those codes—important efforts like training, outreach, implementation, and enforcement.
As a result, energy code compliance levels are below 50 percent in many places, and buildings use more energy than they were designed to. Improving energy code compliance nationwide would result in huge benefits: a taskforce led by IMT estimated that on average every $1 spent on code compliance efforts yields $6 of energy savings.
Many building departments are finding ways to raise compliance rates despite constraints on their budgets and time. The Standard Bearers Award recognizes their achievements. IMT and GBPN will profile the winners on IMT’s website and blog in coming weeks.
The smart strategies that this year’s winners have used include leading classes, webinars, and presentations (Brent Ursenbach, Utah); bringing together diverse coalitions of stakeholders to establish a loan program for duct and envelope leakage testing equipment (Georgia Department of Community Affairs); implementing a third-party program for performance testing, and making sure all Development Review Department residential inspectors are certified to perform energy code inspections (Austin, Texas).
“This year’s winners highlight the important role that states, local jurisdictions, and individuals play in cost-effectively improving compliance with building energy codes,” said Ryan Meres, Senior Code Compliance Specialist for IMT. “By helping to improve compliance, the winners are not only reducing energy costs, but also ensuring buildings that are safer, healthier, and more resilient for their occupants.”
Read more about the winners in the IMT fact sheet.
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ABOUT IMT: The Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting energy efficiency, green building, and environmental protection in the United States and abroad. Much of IMT’s work addresses market failures that inhibit investment in energy efficiency. For more information, visit imt.org.
ABOUT GBPN: The Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN) aims to achieve deep mitigation of GHG emissions from the building sector. We are a global nonprofit partnership organization advancing knowledge and expertise on building energy efficiency and performance. The GBPN operates a global center based in Paris and four regional hubs in the U.S., Europe, China, and India. Through our network, we help decision makers and business leaders craft policy packages that can make today’s leading state-of-the art policies in each region the standard by 2020. Visit gbpn.org.