Central planning is born of a dim view of the human species: "people are too dumb to know that they can save money with energy efficiency built into their buildings, they are too dumb to make sure their contractors are building their unit as specified, and they are too dumb to be allowed to choose what they want. I'm smart, so I'll force my brilliance on everyone else via building codes and inspections to make sure those codes are followed."
First, how do suppose homebuyers are going to verify that the concrete slab currently underground and under their potential home met specs before being covered up? Same goes for wiring and plumbing and insulation, and framing, and the 75% of any building that is not visible and inspectable to the end consumer.
There are many ways, some used long before their were significant prescriptive building codes. Consumers, in a free society, can choose a product based on:
- Certification during building by an independent, business, (or governmental) inspection/testing agency. (As, for example, U.L. does).
- Contractor inspection before purchase (sampling, x-ray of foundation, etc.).
- Purchase of insurance by seller or buyer, to guarantee performance.
- Reliance on brand name quality.
For example, long before the regulatory era Sears and Roebuck, and Gordon-Van Tine (among others), produced nationally distributed kit homes of equal or better quality; hardwood floors, solid oversized timber, etc. And people bought them because of the suppliers reputation and references, not because of some City building inspector.
Second, it its a established fact, based on far better science than the OP study, that many humans are too stupid or too cognitively lazy to realize they will save more money in the long run by paying for efficiency up front. It is also an established fact that even if they realize it, many people will still make the self-harming and other-harming decision to pay less now because their mental calculus almost always underweights future savings.
False. The desire to save more now, than later, is purely based on subjective and (more importantly) individual time preferences.
Second only to the immense moral failing of the free-market faith is its intellectual failing in resting on the assumption of human rationality, which ironically is itself to epitome of irrationality, definitively falsified by 75 years of cognitive science.
Unless you are proposing rule by a non-human entity, then all decision makers are subject to "intellectual failing" - including government. Telling us that ALL agents of action have a degree of irrationality is irrelevant.
Third, the regulations are not just to protect consumers against fraud but to protect the species against the harms of reckless waste of polluting energy. Even if the contractor and consumer were in full agreement on creating energy inefficient homes, the rest of us have an interest and a right to prevent them from doing things that harm the rest of us.
Depends on what you mean by "doing things" and "harming the rest of us".