On July 5, 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed three climate-related bills that tighten New York’s building codes and appliance standards, support the growth of thermal energy across utilities, and extend wage requirements for workers to smaller renewable energy projects. These new pieces of legislation come at the heels of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions, shifting the onus on state and local jurisdictions to act on climate goals.
The Advanced Building Codes, Appliance and Equipment Efficiency Standards Act of 2022 requires commercial and residential buildings to meet or exceed the energy savings achieved by complying with the latest versions of ASHRAE 90.1 and International Energy Conservation Codes (IECC), respectively, while considering cost effectiveness. The Act also provides the authority for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to establish water and energy efficiency standards for any appliances sold, installed, or leased in the state. Stringent building safety and energy codes and appliance standards generate energy and cost savings for consumers, in addition to improving community resilience in the face of outages and disruptive climate events. This statewide code amendment joins several pieces of existing buildings-focused clean energy legislation in New York, such as Local Law 97, a building performance standard in New York City that requires buildings above 25,000 square feet to meet increasingly strict emissions caps. In addition to helping meet New York’s statewide goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 and having 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, these compounding building codes and performance standards are expected to create thousands of new jobs in the clean energy sector. For more information, or if you have questions, please contact John Williams at john.williams@nyserda.ny.gov.