News Story: A Portland Cement Association vice president is urging the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers to pursue standards that will achieve a 30 percent improvement in energy-efficiency for buildings, and to find a cost-effective way to do.

Otherwise, there is fear the Department of Energy will become the standard enforcer.

“If you were going to throw cost out the window altogether, you could go to someone and say, ‘Let’s put in R30 insulation in all the walls of the building,’” said Steve Skalko, a PCA vice president and also a member of ASHRAE’s Standard Setting Project Committee. “It wouldn’t matter how much it would save in relation to how much it costs to do it. That’s the law of diminishing returns.”

Skalko says that federal agencies are dropping hints they may soon begin imposing far more challenging energy-efficiency requirements on new buildings.

“I get a sense that some of the things that are happening within federal agencies indicate they look to start cracking down on their federal requirements for buildings,” Skalko said. “The fear is that, if the ASHRAE standards don’t save 30 percent, the federal legislation will expect the Department of Energy to enact legislation that will achieve 30 percent, and the DOE would be under no obligation to look at it from a cost perspective. They would just get out the big stick and say, ‘This is the way it’s gonna be.’”