Your new house comes with a green surcharge

Colorado’s Energy Code Board has published its Model Low Energy and Carbon Code. The standards are sold as an efficiency measure. In practice, they lock years of new mandates into every home built in the state — and every mandate raises the price of housing.

Colorado lawmakers and utilities increasingly blame AI data centers for rising electricity bills. Data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and their growth deserves scrutiny. But they are a convenient scapegoat for a broader and more durable source of higher housing costs: state and local building and energy codes.

Policymakers who genuinely want cheaper housing should stop pretending affordability can survive endless mandates.

Colorado’s 2022 Building Greenhouse Gas Emissions law required local governments to adopt “electric-ready” and “solar-ready” provisions beginning in 2023. The