If you’re someone who cares about reducing energy use in buildings, you’re an ideal advocate. If you work for a city or county, or in a sustainability office, or you’re a building code official, environmentalist, low-income advocate, construction industry leader, concerned citizen, or just someone who pays an energy bill, we need your voice to make a critical difference this code cycle.

The Glide Path

If enough pro-efficiency officials vote, we can start to reduce the energy needs of new U.S. buildings, reduce carbon emissions, save households and businesses thousands in reduced energy bills, improve building durability and safety, and set America on track for energy independence and security. With modest efficiency gains at each three-year code cycle from now on, we can achieve Net Zero energy codes by the year 2050 — or sooner with stronger codes.

Many eligible voters are not even aware they’re eligible to vote! In fact, in previous code cycles, of the more than 100,000 potential governmental officials eligible to vote in the U.S., only about 20,000 registered to vote with the ICC, and only about 500 even cast votes for the IECC. If just 500 more had cast votes, today’s energy code would already be more efficient than it is, and we would have saved thousands in energy bills and kept many tons of greenhouse gasses from being emitted. Help educate your local government officials and get them engaged in the process.

It’s possible that you could be a potential voter and not even know it! If you work for a city, county or state government that has registered with ICC as a “Governmental Member” (or if you’re an Honorary Member of the ICC), you are eligible to vote to determine the next IECC, but only if you jurisdiction’s Primary Member validates you as a “Governmental Member Voting Representative.”

Per ICC policy, eligible voters include:

ICC Governmental Member Voting Representatives and Honorary Members in good standing who have been confirmed by ICC in accordance with the Electronic Voter Validation System. Such confirmations are required to be revalidated annually. Eligible Final Action voters in attendance at the Public Comment Hearing and those participating in the Online Governmental Consensus Vote shall have one vote per eligible voter on all Codes. Individuals who represent more than one Governmental Member shall be limited to a single vote.

GMVRs shall be designated in writing, by the Governmental Member, and shall be employees or officials of the Governmental Member or departments of the Governmental Member, provided that each of the designated voting representatives shall be an employee or a public official actively engaged either full or part time, in the administration, formulation, implementation or enforcement of laws, ordinances, rules or regulations relating to the public health, safety and welfare.