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Executive Summary

America is the largest consumer of energy in the world, and the majority of this energy comes from dirty and dangerous sources like coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. Our continued reliance on these fuels contributes to global warming, undermines our energy independence, and costs American families and businesses more and more money every year.

We can save money and help solve global warming by reducing the amount of energy we use, and the best place to start is in the buildings we live and work in every day. Over 40 percent of our energy – and 10 percent of the all the energy used in the world – goes toward powering America’s buildings, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the technology and skills to drastically improve the efficiency of our buildings, and we should set a goal of reducing our overall building energy consumption 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050.

A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences confirms that these goals are well within our reach,[1] and we can achieve them by implementing an aggressive two-part strategy in the coming years. First of all, we must strengthen the energy efficiency requirements for new buildings over time, culminating in a zero net energy standard by 2030. This means that two decades from now, new buildings will be so efficient that they can produce all the power they need right on-site from renewable sources like wind and solar. We must also improve the efficiency of our existing buildings, investing in retrofits to make our buildings 30 percent more efficient over the next 20 years.

Because building operations are responsible for such a huge proportion of our energy use, making buildings more efficient is a great way to work on a number of energy-related problems at once. This report analyzes the effects of meeting those efficiency goals and provides state-by-state data on the economic and environmental benefits. On a national level, we can achieve significant benefits in just the next 10 years:

• A 15 to 20 percent reduction in fossil fuel use in our buildings.
• Reducing building energy use by over 20 percent, saving enough energy every year to provide power to over 13 million Americans.[2]
• Reducing energy bills by over 20 percent, saving $150 to $200 per person every year.
• Cutting our projected global warming emissions from buildings by almost 20 percent.

By 2050, the benefits of meeting our building efficiency targets will be enormous:

• Reducing the amount of fossil fuels we use in our buildings by 40 to 60 percent, including cutting our overall natural gas consumption by almost 10 percent.
• Saving almost 5 quadrillion BTUs of energy every year, which is enough power to meet the energy needs of 13 U.S. states.
• Saving American families over $80 billion a year in residential energy spending alone, which means average annual savings of over $800 per family compared to what they pay today.
• Preventing the emission of 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of taking almost 330 million cars off the road. This reduction in pollution is enough to bring America’s total building-related emissions 25 percent below our current levels.

Achieving these benefits will require strong policies that promote energy efficiency in buildings:

• Building codes should be steadily strengthened so they are 30 percent more efficient in 2012 and 50 percent more efficient in 2018, with the goal of a zero net energy standard by 2030. The federal government should provide states with resources to implement and enforce codes.
• Governments at all levels should expand programs that invest in energy retrofits and weatherization.