The Biden administration has finalized a major rule change that raises the bar for real estate developers who want newly built homes to qualify for U.S. government-backed loans, laying the groundwork for a massive overhaul in the way Americans build houses. Regulators issued a final determination Thursday that the breakthrough energy codes that dramatically increased the efficiency of new homes but caused a firestorm in the construction industry met the federal government’s standards for keeping housing affordable and slashing utility bills. Meeting those codes is now set to become the baseline criteria for qualifying for federal loans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which also issues loans, is likely to follow suit, but maintains a separate regulatory timeline. Federal regulators expect the codes to affect at least 140,000 new homes each year and save the U.S. $2.1 billion on energy bills compared to the $605 million the stricter standards add to total construction costs. “This long-overdue action will protect homeowners and renters from high energy costs while making a real dent in climate pollution,” Lowell Ungar, federal policy director of the watchdog American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said in a press release. “It makes no sense for the government to help people move into new homes that waste energy and can be dangerous in extreme temperatures.” The Biden administration’s adoption of the codes came the same day the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the nation’s first-ever limits on power plants’ carbon emissions. Combined with new rules at the Energy Department to ease permitting on transmission lines, the regulatory package was designed to put the U.S. on track to clean up the grid, meaning the electricity powering cars and stovetops in modernized homes would emit little planet-heating pollution. The... |