Washington State Senate Bill 5854, which was passed in 2009, required the State Building Code Council to adopt state energy codes that require homes and buildings constructed from 2013 through 2031 to incrementally move towards a 70 percent reduction in energy use by 2031.  To accomplish that goal, owners of homes built after 2012 might be required to disclose their utility bills to regulatory agencies who would issue fines, require the purchase of carbon credits and/or require building upgrades if they were using what was deemed as too much energy.

The proposed rules would require every new building to certify the amount of energy the building would use to receive a Certificate of Occupancy.  Then, for the next several years, the occupant has to turn over their utility records to local building officials who would have to certify whether the occupant is consuming energy within the certified levels.  If the occupant uses too much, the building official would be required to fine the building owner with a tax requirement.  That owner would have to purchase CO2 credits to offset the added amount of energy use.

But, it doesn’t stop there (as if that weren’t enough), wood burning equipment of all types would be banned in new construction, even high efficiency wood stoves.

If you want to know who to blame, SB 5854 was passed strictly along party lines, with two conservative democrats voting no along with all republicans.

As far as what is happening now, a citizen group is trying to write fule to comply with SB5854.  The job is not going to be easy and it will likely be corrupted by special interests:

Banning wood stoves means that all new construction would be obligated to use only electricity or natural gas.  Who as a monopoly provides both services?  By obtaining state standards for energy efficiency measures, it relieves utilities of the cost to pay for utility efficiency incentives.  Utility stockholders benefit as the utilities are able to avoid expensive investments in traditional generation sources which, historically have diluted stockholder equity.  Finally, these requirements will assure that utilities can eventually petition regulators for earnings on speculative energy resources such as wind, geothermal or solar installations.  Utilities win, stockholders win and new homeowners lose.

This is a pretty good gimmick if it is tolerated by the public.   The Building Code Council is now faced with a workload on the energy issue that is unprecedented.  The Energy TAG is scheduled to meet all day, every Thursday, from now through June.  They are even considering additional meetings in an attempt to get through the petition of 171 amendments.  If members of the TAG fail to show up and stay for the meetings, they will be removed from the ability to vote on issues.  This means that experts who are paid to attend such meetings, like utility representative, environmental representatives or people from the Department of Commerce, will always be in attendance to forward their agenda.  For Building Officials who must take a day from work, business owners or others who are donating their time, the chances are that they will ultimately be denied a voice in the Energy TAG process. – wabo.org

The public should not just take this from their state government.  If you plan on having any discussions with your legislators or legislative candidates this election year, this would be a good topic to discuss.