Guest columnist William D. Fay discusses the 30 Percent Solution.

The Responsible Energy Codes Alliance (RECA) has writing to the EPA to support and to recommend improvements to the proposed draft 2011 ENERGY STAR Qualified New Homes guidelines.

Many of the proposed changes would make the ENERGY STAR program more consistent with the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), the national residential model energy code that is currently being adopted and implemented by many states in response to federal energy policy and requirements outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

While RECA supports the improvements identified in the latest EPA draft, they also recommended that a few relatively small changes be made in order to maintain consistency among ENERGY STAR programs, and further changes to ensure that homes built under the ENERGY STAR program are no weaker than homes built to the 2009 IECC.

Detailed comments from RECA are on the attached Proposed Guidelines Comment Form

To the extent that homeowners know anything about the building code, most assume the focus is on the safety of crews who build houses and of the people who will occupy them. In this assumption the homeowners would be correct.

But one section of the building code has implications that reach far beyond the individual house and homeowner, and that is the efficiency.

There is a significant change in the air.

A host of codes is tuning up for the same chorus, and it's all about energy efficiency.

Click here to download the full article from Construction Dimensions.

The Dow Chemical Company and Cobblestone Homes today introduced Michigan's first, affordable net-zero energy home. Using readily available energy efficiency technologies from Dow, the house, dubbed the "Vision Zero" home is expected to save $3,507 in energy costs and avert 44,855 lbs of CO₂ annually.

For a video overview and a virtual tour of the Vision Zero home, please visit www.visionzerohome.com