Mark Your Calendar

The next Building Energy Codes and Standards Committee (BECS) Meeting will be held on Wednesday and Thursday, January 14-15, 2026, at Sempra Headquarters downtown San Diego.  Information regarding the hotels, meeting registration and preliminary agenda will be available in the near future.

Status of the International Code Council (ICC) Study “Promoting Housing Affordability through the I-Codes” .

In the September 26, 2025 Update, we reported that the ICC had initiated a study titled Promoting Housing Affordability through the I-Codes (BIRC) – ICC.  According to the ICC announcement of the study, “Housing costs and affordability have become critical issues across the United States and many parts of the world. The Code Council supports development of the International Residential Code (IRC) through a consensus process involving stakeholders from throughout the home building industry. The IRC is updated every three years, resulting in incremental changes between each edition using consensus-based methods. Code Council policy requires each proposed change to include cost impact data, which serves as the basis for debate during code development hearings. Contemporary peer reviewed studies continue to find that building codes do not have meaningful implications on homes’ purchase price. However, some industry surveys and projections have suggested stronger interactions. Additional cost drivers often include land development regulations, local development charges, availability of skilled labor, material prices, and interest rates.”  The study will span the next 10 months. As part of this initiative, the ICC is forming “an Advisory Committee (AC) to support the study team in fulfilling the objectives of the effort.”  AGA’s Director, Building Codes & Standards Denise Beach has been appointed to the AC, and participants on the AC are in a non-voting advisory role.  The AC input is intended to help shape recommendations to the ICC Board of Directors for potential actions in the development of the 2030 IRC code cycle.   We will provide updates on the progress of the study particularly on issues of potential impact on natural gas applications.  It goes without saying that affordability is a key consumer concern in the country for housing needs as well as many other areas. End use codes and standards requirements do play a role in maintaining affordability.   While not directly related to BECS Committee end use codes and standards activities, a November 6, 2025 article in ENERGYINDepth  titled “New York’s Democrats Rethink Gas Ban Amidst Affordability Concerns” Illustrates the importance of the need to retain and promote the economic benefits to consumers (lower annual operating costs for consumers using natural gas for space heating, water heating, cooking and clothes drying) of the direct use of natural gas in homes and businesses to help support affordability.

Update on the ICC Request for Comments on the Submit Proposals to the ICC Performance Code  (ICCPC) and User Guide.

In the September 5, 2025 BECS Committee Update on End Use Codes and Standards, we reported that the  ICC Performance Code  issued  a notice for public comments on the latest  draft of the ICC Performance Code (ICCPC). (To be clear, the ICCPC is not widely adopted in the United States but needs to be evaluated since it can be).  According to the release statement, the purpose of the public comment request is “To provide a modern, updated, International Code®-based option, the Code Council is reimagining the ICCPC, a code originally developed during the 1996-2000 code cycle and largely unchanged since. This important effort is driven by the “Reimagining the ICC Performance Code” study, aimed at bringing the code up to today’s industry standards. Rapid change related to the acceleration of new technology, pressures from climate change and population growth can make it difficult for traditional prescriptive regulatory approaches to remain current. The ICCPC is intended to provide an enhanced regulatory tool to address these issues. The development of the ICCPC will better align with actual performance across numerous disciplines, facilitate more robust solutions, and provide stronger linkages to design methods, tools, and data. This can be a tool for countries that have a robust system of prescriptive codes and standards and associated building regulatory systems to assist in the adoption of new and sustainable technologies. The ICCPC can also serve as a critical framework for those countries without such systems in place.” The deadline to submit proposals to the Initial Draft of the ICCPC has been extended to November 14, 2025, 11:59 PM (PT).  As a reminder, the ICCPC is being developed through ICC Council Policy 12A (ANSI), The and proposals must be submitted through https://standards.cdpaccess.com/login/.  A complete pdf of the Initial Draft is found here ​2027 ICCPC Initial Draft.pdf​. Note also that a working draft of the User’s Guide is available for review and comment through December 12, 2025. The draft can be found here ​User’s Guide Development.​  According to the ICC, “The User’s Guide, as with past editions of the ICCPC, is nonmandatory and provided to support and describe how the performance code is intended to be applied.  In addition to being organized along with the new structure and content of the ICCPC, the aim is to provide a stronger framework for performance criteria and verification methods. An online form will be shared shortly to provide feedback.  This document is informal and is not subject to Council Policy 12A (ANSI). For more information on the overall process please reference the ICCPC Website. “

BECS Committee staff and members continue reviewing the draft of both the ICCPC and the ICCPC Users Guide and have identified a number of proposed comments on both documents as follows:

ICCPC

  • The provisions in the ICCPC are mainly non-mandatory and therefore lack enforceability .
  • The provisions in the ICCPC lack a cost benefit analysis and will potentially impact affordability depending on the specified provision.
  • The provisions in Chapter 8, Building Energy Performance calls for “A building’s energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions for space conditioning, service water heating electrical power and lighting shall be minimized.” but offer no methodology to measure the reductions or what level of minimization is acceptable.
  • Section 801.2.1 # 4 includes the statement that the energy source of the building service equipment….should be considered to “ facilitate the efficient use of energy and minimization of greenhouse gases..” implying that fuel neutrality is not to be included.

ICCPC User’s Guide

Comments on Chapter 8 Building Energy Performance as follows:

The Energy Efficiency Performance Criteria is based on site energy and not source (full fuel cycle) energy, the technically correct metric for measuring energy consumption and necessary to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and states the following:

  • A building shall use no more energy than 75% of baseline as appropriate to building type and climate zone.
  • Building energy baseline shall be calculated according to one of the following:

Verification / Compliance Methods.

  • Site Energy Use Intensity (EUI) and Greenhouse Gas Intensity can be calculated by applying NSI/ASHRAE/IES

Standard 100-2024.

AGA will propose to reference the Source Energy Use Intensity (EUI) referring to the EPA’s US Energy Use Intensity by Property Type cited in this section that states the following, “Source energy provides the most equitable way to combine primary and secondary energy types into a single common unit, ensuring that no building receives either a credit or a penalty based on its energy source or utility. You can learn more about source energy and the way it is computed at www.energystar.gov/SourceEnergy. We strongly encourage you to use source EUI.”

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. AGA is evaluating the BECS memberships use and value of this information. Please advise us by December 15,2025 of your experiences using this Update.