GOP Ramps Up Effort To Block Biden Rule That Saves Americans $2 Billion On Energy

The “real people” facing the “real consequences” of a Biden administration policy designed to reduce Americans’ utility bills by $2 billion are surreally photogenic.

Thanks to a new federal rule requiring newly built homes to meet higher energy efficiency standards to qualify for federal loans, Noah, the smiling paralegal from Atlanta, can’t afford the home he wants to buy. Neither can Keith, the bearded West Virginia schoolteacher whose dream house is now appraised at an eye-poppingly higher value because of the regulation. Nor can the LaMontes, charming-looking newlyweds “trying to start a new family in Columbus, Ohio.”

That’s according to testimony on the website of the Leading Builders of America, one of the nation’s two largest lobbying organizations representing the home-building industry. The claims are debatable, based at least in part on calculations advocates say inflate the costs of constructing homes to meet the latest and greenest ever building codes in the United States.

The portraits depicting the supposed homebuyers areall stock photographs. (The LBA said “the numbers used in the testimonials are based upon real scenarios” but admitted “actual buyers” have yet to be “affected.”)

Yet the industry’s campaign to roll back one of President Joe Biden’s least understood but most effective policies to simultaneously slash planet-heating emissions and soaring energy bills is very real ― and it’s just getting started.

At issue is a regulation finalized in April that saw the federal government formally adopt the most energy-efficient national building codes ever published by the International Code Council, the private nonprofit whose codebook is used as a benchmark for most of the United States.

While building