The White House is required by law to move forward on a minor regulatory update that could have enormous consequences, spurring construction of tens of thousands of new homes built to the nation’s greenest energy efficiency standards ever written.
Yet more than a year after the key federal agency in charge said it would finalize the rule, the Biden administration has yet to even release a draft of the policy to the public ― a move that appeared to both violate the law and allow construction of as many as 20,000 new homes every month that will likely need costly upgrades in the future.
If enacted, the policy would save mostly low- and middle-income homeowners thousands of dollars in heating and cooling bills at a time when energy prices are soaring, inflation continues to sting, and the country’s aging electrical grids are buckling as Americans blast air conditioners to survive increasingly extreme heat waves. Over time, the highly efficient housing stock would, by one…
