Alas, you've made the same blunder as Togo and Nice Squirrel; you either don't understand the original policy goal OR you're thoughtlessly embracing immaterial and extraneous excuses.
Yes "home energy usage" is far greater today than forty years ago - it is THE POINT of the article. Mandated increased efficiency had two effects: a) it increased the cost of home ownership and then b) it encouraged increased consumption of energy. It did not "save" energy as a whole because of the 'rebound' effect.
Telling us that houses added AC, because of increased efficiency (in the benign climate California) is not an excuse, its a failure of policy.
You are telling us that the rise of the cost of "home ownership*" over the last 35 years is due to increased energy efficiency standards?
No, I said that energy related building codes increased the cost of building a home in 1980 by 10 percent - its in the paper. Therefore it increased cost (selling price) to the consumer (and/or decreased the growth rate of new housing supply).
You are also telling us the policies encourages the consumption of energy? Please tell us exactly how a energy efficient building code encourages consumption of energy? (I can think of one example in commercial buildings, but want you to come up with the ones on your own.)
Its also known as the rebound effect - when efficiency is increased the cost of use drops - then consumers use more of it. Individuals add and leave on interior and exterior house lights and entertainment centers; add home office equipment, add appliances and fixtures; they add HVAC and condition more spaces and leave heat/cooling on during daily absences (etc.).
In sum, energy efficiency makes doing the activities that cause the imagined problems cheaper, which encourages more of those activities.
Also please tell us the original goal, because I understand the original goal to be related to geopolitics politics that brought about these codes - which included the malaise of the economy in the 1970 and acute energy shortages of that time. It was seen as a matter of national security. Are these not the reasons? Or were the reasons more nefarious such as the secret liberal cabal finding ways to subvert our freedoms. Please tell us the TRUE reasons for these codes.
As usual, politicians thought they could "solve" a sudden price shock during the Arab oil embargo and cartel by commanding consumer economics. In 1974, California established the California Energy Commission and gave it the authority to “prescribe, by regulation, lighting, insulation, climate control systems, and other building design and construction standards which increase the efficient use of energy.” What followed were 'conservation' edicts in the form of regulatory code. The rhetorical justification were based on several nonsensical notions: a) that the world was running out of fossil fuel supplies and b) that energy independence was attainable or desirable (some might recall that several years later Jimmy Carter would push for the federal launching of synthetic fuel production from coal).
The glib promises flowed. The California Energy Commission projected at the time that homes built after the standards were enacted, those built in the 1980’s relative to homes built in the 1970’s, would use 80% less energy. They claimed California would only be using a fifth as much energy as the pre-building-code homes. Starting in the 1970s, California was touted as an example of "progressive" solutions and on both a federal and state level "energy efficiency" has been the misbegotten 'fix it' for what turned out to be a non-problem.
Yet, "the crisis" of higher energy prices increased supply, and at the beginning of the 1980s and oil prices collapsed. But over the last 40 years the henny-penny's periodically proclaim the world is about to run out of oil and/or gas, and that energy independence and energy efficiency is a panacea to this "unsustainable" non-problem.
The actual problem is that energy efficiency is a faith based sacred cow among environmentalists. So much so they really don't care that it addresses a non-problem. They don't care if it does not mitigate pollution or global warming. They don't care if it does not actually save money on a cost-benefit basis. They don't care if carbon taxes, which ration through price rather than "energy regulation" ACTUALLY reduces energy usage.
Its just an idea that sounds intuitively right, and it is now one of the environmentalist worship totems. More importantly, it lets political leadership pass a bunch of policies that will make many feel better - and get them re-elected.
Like energy independence, its a bad idea that won't go away.
