The Sierra Club Missouri Chapter is a proud member of the St. Louis Energy Coalition - a diverse coalition of energy efficiency advocates, including architects, building scientists, builders and home energy auditors.. We support modern energy efficiency standards.
On Wednesday, February 8 the St. Louis County Building Commission failed county residents by recommending adoption of a severely weakened version of the 2015 International Energy Efficiency Builidng Code for new residential buildings. The amended code, developed by the St. Louis County Building Codes Review Committee, stripped the Code of common sense measures such as duct testing, blower door testing, up-to-date insulation and window thickness standards and programable thermostats. This amended version would be a huge efficiency loss for new homeowners in comparaison to an unamended code - in fact, it would actually decrease efficiency compared to present standards.
This Code recommendation will now go before the St. Louis County Council.
This present Code proposal contains almost all the amendment proposed to the code by the Home Builders' Association of St. Louis and Eastern Missouri. In an over two year long process neither the Building Commission nor the Building Codes Review Committee took into account even a single recommendation by the St. Louis Energy Coalition.
The reason for this is simple: we have a situation where the fox is watching the henhouse. Both of these entities are thoroughly compromised by their ties with the Home Builders' Association.