If I told you that a group of progressive Washington politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, an international NGO, and a collection of extremist environmental groups got together to map out a way to save you money on your electric bill, would you believe it? Chances are that even the most ardent Democrats just started clenching their wallets when they read that sentence.
But believe it or not, that’s exactly what some are trying to get us to buy into with the fight to adopt a new set of radical green energy codes throughout the country, including here in New Hampshire. Luckily, we’re fighting back.
These codes, written by the International Energy Code Council, would impose what amounts to a new Green Energy Tax on home construction by sending costly new mandates to the states, dictating how our houses need to be constructed. Essentially, they make it more expensive to build new homes by mandating a whole host of unnecessary new code changes.
How much more will it cost to build a home if this code were to be adopted? The New Hampshire Home Builders Association estimates that for a home in the Granite State, this tax would add as much as $20,000 for the new construction of a modest 2000-square-foot home. The costs are also greater for smaller construction companies than they are for larger ones. If you apply that over the life of a 30-year fixed mortgage at current rates, it would amount to more than $50,000 per household!
This past week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives sent a giant shockwave back down to Washington when it rejected adopting Washington’s new Green Energy Tax. As you can imagine, the D.C. elite didn’t like that.
Despite the obvious downfalls of this proposal, Washington still truly believes it will get its way. The Washington establishment simply cannot accept that a small state like ours is fighting back against its edicts.
You may have seen the full-court press that these folks are doing in newspapers across the state to try and save this doomed proposal. They’ve been trying to get us to believe that if we just adopt a set of Biden administration-approved energy codes, that your house will magically become more efficient and save you money. When was the last time that the Biden administration did anything to save you money?
In fact, by their own most ambitious projections, adopting these codes would save just $750 per year. At that rate, it would take you more than 65 years to make back the initial $50,000 investment, and that’s assuming that you don’t refinance your mortgage.
This is all without even mentioning the hidden Appendix A provisions that allow municipalities to adopt “net-zero” policies for home building. Net-zero policies require homes to have absolutely no fossil fuels – no oil or gas heat in New Hampshire homes in the dead of winter. While this is an admiral goal for the future, it is simply unrealistic today. This would be like requiring everyone to sell their Hondas and buy brand-new Teslas tomorrow.
New Hampshire has never been fond of being told what to do. With inflation continuing to stay stubbornly high and a major housing crisis taking hold in our state, this seems like the worst possible time to make home construction more expensive. But the increasingly hyper-partisan Washington politicians are continuing to try and force their will on our state. They’ve drawn their battle lines and the fight isn’t over yet.
It’s the scotch-sipping, Washington think-tank intellectuals versus the Dunkin coffee-drinking Granite Staters that actually build our homes. Whose side are you on?
