U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
US Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Building Energy Codes Program
Site Map HELP - Ask a Codes Expert
EERE Information Center
Printer Friendly Format
Building Energy Codes Program

Revised International Energy Code:
Easier to Use and Enforce

The International Codes Council (ICC) recently approved sweeping changes to the residential chapters of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC ), the national model code that is the basis for many state energy codes. The revised residential energy code replaces chapters three through six of the previous code. It shrinks the IECC codebook by more than half, resulting is a code that will be easier to read, understand, use and enforce.

The changes will become the 2004 Supplement to the 2003 IECC and the corresponding energy chapter of the IRC. Highlights of the revisions include:

Some other changes include: limits on window U-factors and SHGC (Solar Heat Gain Coefficient) when trade offs are used in compliance; requirements for sealed air handlers; changes in the locations where vapor barriers are required; and elimination of unused, redundant or conflicting definitions.

Because of the extensive changes, the 2004 Supplement will include a printed copy of the entire IECC, rather than just the changes. The 2004 Supplement can be ordered through the ICC Store at www.iccsafe.org.

DOE's Public Comment for May 2004 ICC Hearing

DOE's Public Comments on the results of the ICC's September, 2003, public hearing on code change proposals for the 2003/2004 Code Development Cycle are still available for review and your information. They were considered by the ICC membership at the ICC's Final Action Hearings in May, 2004.

DOE's Code Changes Approved at September 2003 ICC Hearing

The ICC building code hearings were held in September in Nashville. DOE's proposed rewrite of the residential portion of the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code) was approved as modified (several changes being introduced by floor motion). An unofficial copy of the approved text with markings to indicate the modifications can be viewed at http://www.energycodes.info/. DOE's rewrite of the energy chapter, Chapter 11, of the IRC (International Residential Code) was also approved as modified (a few changes being introduced by floor motion).

DOE's three commercial code changes (shown below) were also approved.

A full report of the September hearing is available from ICC at http://www.iccsafe.org/cs/codes/2003-04cycle/index.html. Public comments on the results of the September hearing were due back to the ICC by January 14th, 2004. The public hearing for ICC's final action of this code development cycle will take place at the ICC hearing May 17-20th, 2004 in Overland Park Kansas. The ICC web site at http://www.iccsafe.org/cs/codes describes the ICC code development process. Information about the next ICC hearing in May 2004 is available at http://www.iccsafe.org/news/springmeeting/index.html.

DOE Credited with Energy Code Work by ICC Journal

In part of the report from the Nov/Dec 2003 ICC Journal “Building Safety”:

“The major item with respect to the IECC was Proposed Code Change EC48-03/04, submitted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which accounted for approximately 3 1/2 hours of the hearings and involved additional discussion of six floor amendments prior to being approved with modifications. The end result is that the first six chapters of the 2003 IECC will be deleted and replaced by four new chapters. Coordinated revisions were also made by the IRC Building/Energy Committee to the IRC residential energy requirements.
The primary reason for these changes was to simplify the residential provisions and replace them with a document that could make the code more usable, ease enforcement and provide better compliance. To this end, the climate zones were modified so that there are fewer zones and they apply countywide. Window/wall limitations that had previously applied were also eliminated.”

DOE Code Proposal History

The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted a major code change proposal to the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code) for the next code change cycle. The proposal completely revises the residential provisions (existing IECC chapters 4, 5, and 6), creates new climate zones (chapter 3), and updates the administrative and definitions chapters (chapters 1 and 2) of the IECC. In addition, a parallel code change to revise the energy chapter of the IRC (International Residential Code) was submitted.

DOE went through an extensive period of interaction with a wide variety of interested parties, including both manufacturers and code users. Hundreds of comments were received and several drafts were made public. The end result is the code text linked below, which is the same as submitted into the ICC code change process. The key focus of the proposed code changes is to make the energy code in the IECC and IRC more usable. The department wishes to extend its thanks to all participants in this process.

Documents on this page are available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Download Acrobat Reader

A map of the new climate zones is below.

DOE has also proposed three changes to the commercial part of the IECC. The changes propose to:

Support Documents

For more information on the revised climate zones see the following links. One of the most notable of DOE's proposed changes is the elimination of the dependence of thermal requirements on the window-wall ratio (WWR) of a home. This is discussed at length in the WWR white paper listed below.