Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In this paper we present a model to estimate the national energy and economic impacts of the Department of Energy Building America program. The program goal is to improve energy performance in new residential construction, by working with builders to design and construct energy-efficient homes at minimal cost. The model is an adaptation of the method used to calculate the national energy savings for appliance energy efficiency standards. The main difference is that the key decision here is not the consumer decision to buy an efficienthouse, but rather the builder decision to offer such a house in the market. The builder decision is treated by developing a number of scenarios in which the relative importance of first costs vs. energy savings is varied.