Howard County council advances drafting of electrification, readiness amendments to building code

Howard County Council members spent the bulk of a hybrid work session debating how far to push building-code changes that would accelerate electrification and other “readiness” measures for new construction.

Erin Sherman of the Rocky Mountain Institute summarized a memo presenting 10 options ranging from mandatory all‑electric new buildings to narrower measures such as electric‑vehicle and solar readiness, conduit for future wiring, demand‑response capability and heat‑pump readiness. Sherman told the council the memo aimed to give a menu of approaches jurisdictions have used elsewhere and to show tradeoffs among them.

The discussion focused on legal risk, cost and implementability. Councilmembers Christiana Rigby (District 3) and Deb Young (District 4) told colleagues they had identified four items they considered “low‑hanging fruit”: electric readiness for thermal equipment (conduit or wiring to simplify future electrification), enhanced conservation measures in the energy code, policy language to remove a fuel‑type bias in efficiency accounting (called a “level playing field” or debiasing), and a requirement that air‑conditioning…