Construction Bills: Recent Changes to Construction Laws

• Author: By Brian R. Zimmerman and Rowan T. Mason
• Pages: 42-44

THE CONSTRUCTION LAWYER

42 Volume 42 Issue 3

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The Construction Lawyer

, Volume 42, Number 3. © 2023 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

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CONSTRUCTION BILLS: RECENT CHANGES

TO CONSTRUCTION LAWS

Combatting Climate Change

Through the Construction

Industry: A Recent Carrot

and Stick Legislative

Approach

Recently, governments at the

municipal, county, state, and

federal levels have enacted

codes and statutes with an eye

toward climate change impacts

and emissions goals. Some of

this legislation is intended to

be ameliorative, with legisla-

tion incentivizing construction

spending on green projects or

rules aimed at reducing or elim-

inating carbon-based emissions

sources. Other legislation is

aimed at mitigation of climate

change, with updated codes anticipating more extreme

weather events in the future, including rules on con-

struction considered more resistant to larger and more

intense hurricanes and wildres. The following sum-

marizes several recent developments in climate-focused

legislation.

Incentivizing Greener Construction Projects

The recent passage of the federal Ination Reduction

Act (IRA), which was signed into law by President Biden

in August 2022, offers several incentives for greener con-

struction projects.1

The IRA provides $2.15 billion for spending on

“low-carbon” materials used in new construction or alter-

ation of buildings managed under the General Services

Administration (GSA).2 The GSA owns or leases more

than 9,600 buildings around the country.3 Low-carbon

materials include all materials that have “substantially

lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions asso-

ciated with all relevant stages of production, use, and

disposal” as determined by the Environmental Protec-

tion Agency (EPA).

The IRA similarly grants another $2 billion for the

use of “low-carbon” materials on Federal Highway

Administration projects.

4

This focus on “low-carbon”

materials is part of a broader initiative by the current

administration to focus on cutting down the construc-

tion industry’s demand for steel, concrete, asphalt, and

at glass, which the administration cites as accounting

for one-sixth of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.5

Prohibiting Disfavored Carbon Emissions in New

Construction

Several states and municipalities have recently passed

laws affecting new construction intended to reduce green-

house gas emissions.

In California, as of November 2022, more than 68 cit-

ies and counties had enacted local ordinances banning

(or disincentivizing) the installation of natural gas appli-

ances in new construction.6

More aggressively, the City of Ithaca, New York

became the rst city to take it a step further by seeking to

convert all buildings to electric-only appliances by 2030.7

New York City has advanced an ambitious local ordi-

nance seeking to reduce building carbon emissions by

40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

8

New York

City’s ordinance was motivated in part by its nding that

buildings account for two-thirds of the city’s greenhouse

gas emissions.9

Colorado has followed suit with its own greenhouse

gas reduction bill, which also seeks to incentivize electri-

cation of new and existing buildings.10 Like New York

City, Colorado aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

by 20 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050.11

Hazard-Resistant Building Code Updates

The federal government is pushing for nationwide updates

to building codes to encourage greener buildings and

to fortify building codes against weather events that are

expected to increase in frequency and/or intensity due

to climate change. The Biden administration, which

had dubbed its effort the New Building Codes Initiative,

emphasizes that implementation of updated building

codes will make communities “more resilient to hur-

ricanes, ooding, wildres, and other extreme weather

events that are intensifying due to climate change.”12

Among the statistics cited as the impetus for the initia-

tive, the administration highlights that only 35 percent of

U.S. communities follow the latest building codes, mean-

ing that even new construction in those communities may

be less resilient against extreme weather and less energy

efcient.13

The Biden administration plans to implement this ini-

tiative through a series of means. First, it will empower

the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

to implement the most current building codes wherever

permissible when administering FEMA programs.

14

To

assist in this effort, the Department of Energy has allo-

cated $225 million to support local energy-efciency

codes, in what it terms the Resilient and Efcient Codes

Rowan T. Mason

Brian R. Zimmerman

By Rowan T. Mason and

Brian R. Zimmerman

42 42 7/18/2023 1:52:10 PM7/18/2023 1:52:10 PM