DOE Issues its Building Blueprint for Decarbonizing the U.S. Economy by 2050 – No Role for the Direct Use of Natural Gas.
This week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that they had “led the development of a blueprint for a national strategy for aggressively reducing building greenhouse gas emissions while delivering equity, affordability, and resilience benefits to communities.” According to the announcement, “The national strategy reflects the central role that buildings will play in achieving economy-wide climate goals while delivering cost savings, healthier environments, and high-quality jobs for the American people. Federal agency coordination and support for state and local actions is essential to accelerate the transition to low-carbon buildings.” You can download and read the report, Decarbonizing the U.S. Economy by 2050: A National Blueprint for the Buildings Sector to learn more. AGA staff is reviewing the 80 pages plus “Blueprint” and BECS Committee members are also encouraged to do the same. An initial review that raises concern is the blueprints support of building energy code adoption of “ efficient electrification” provisions as one of the technical solutions with no identified requirement for a cost impact of that approach . It is anticipated that many of the recommendations in the blueprint will be cited in proposals to model energy codes and state and local energy code adoptions.
Accessing the BECS Committee Community Site, Draft Minutes of the May 8-10, 2024 BECS Committee Meeting Posted on the Site.
Earlier this year, a new BECS Committee Community site was launched. The intention of the site is to provide a single location for member communications and resources, including meeting minutes, agendas, presentations, technical documents and AGA’s advocacy on behalf of our members. The site is only accessible to full BECS members, alternates, and ex-officio members. Courtesy members do not have access to the site. The site can be accessed in two manners. The first is using the direct link to the AGA Community site: https://community.aga.org. The second is through the AGA.org website. Under the Events & Community tab, click on Committees. (Note: log-in credentials for both the AGA.org site and the Community.AGA.org site use the same username – your e-mail address – but should have different passwords. Therefore, if you use the second option, you will need to first log into the AGA.org site, and then will need to also log into the Community site.)
You will need to log into the system. Once logged into the system, you will see a list of AGA Committee – choose Building Energy Codes & Standards. From the landing page, choose [Committee Website]. Look for a tab on the upper right-hand side of the screen titled “Communities” and choose “My Communities”. This will give you the list of all Committee sites that you have access to. Click on Building Energy Standards & Codes.
All documents are being uploaded in the library (line of tabs under the header). We have organized the Library by topics, for example, DOE has three subfolders where NOPRs and Comment Letters are housed. We are still in process of populating the site with the information from our previous committee site, so bear with us.
The 2024 Edition of the International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC) Now Available
As a reminder, the 2024 Edition of the International Fuel Gas Code is now available for purchase (hard copies or digital formats) and can be ordered here. The site also provides online access to view the 2024 IFGC and outlines changes from the 2021 Edition. Note that the IFGC is jointly developed by AGA and the International Code Council, and the 2024 Edition is endorsed by the Plumbing-Heating -Cooling-Contractors (PHCC). AGA has a limited amount of complimentary hard copies of the 2024 and 2021 Editions of the IFGC for BECS Committee members. Please let us know if you want copies of either or both editions and we will send them out to you until our supply is depleted. Finally, this ICC Website provides an updated list of the state adoption of all of the ICC model codes that is a good resource when questions are raised about what ICC model code (Fuel Gas, Fire, Residential, Energy, etc.) is adopted in any area of the United States.
AHRI Releases the April, 2024 Heating and Cooling Equipment Shipment Data.
For those interested in shipment trends for residential and commercial gas and electric storage type water heaters, residential gas and oil furnaces, electric heat pumps and air-conditioners, click here for the June 14, 2024 Air-Conditioning Heating, & Refrigeration (AHRI) Press Release that provides the April, 2024 U.S. Heating and Cooling Equipment Shipment Data. For previous monthly shipment releases and historical data, please click here . You may also wish to share this information with other groups or individuals within your organization that would be interested in this shipment data.
State Codes Activity Update.
Attached is a weekly feature of the “Friday Update” covering state code calendar activities as presented by the online utility “Fiscal Note,” which is sponsored by APGA and AGA Code and Standards. Please review the update and determine if there are state code activities that impact your service territory or organization.