The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has joined 15 states in a legal complaint to prevent the adoption of new minimum energy-efficiency standards.
NAHB joins Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia in the lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The suit seeks to halt HUD and the USDA from adopting the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and the 2019 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) benchmark as the minimum energy-efficiency standards for certain single-family and multifamily homes going forward.
Proponents of the new standards cite national energy savings, reduced greenhouse gases and about $2,300 in annual energy cost savings for the typical homeowner.
However, NAHB chairman Carl Harris said compliance with the 2021 IECC can add more than $22,000 to the average price of a new home, while homebuilders estimate operating costs will increase by an average of $31,000.
“NAHB is the only private entity in this lawsuit seeking to halt HUD and USDA from adopting the 2021 IECC because homebuilders can document how this egregious regulation will needlessly raise housing costs and hurt the nation’s most vulnerable home buyers and renters,” Harris said in a statement. “This ill-conceived policy will act as a deterrent to new construction at a time when the nation desperately needs to boost its housing supply to lower shelter inflation costs.”
He also said the move by HUD and the USDA is in “direct conflict with the current energy codes in the majority of jurisdictions around the country.”
“Our lawsuit seeks to show that granting HUD and USDA authority to insure mortgages for new single-family homes and apartments only if they are built to (the new standards) was done in an unconstitutional manner,” Harris said.