Builder group: NY should focus energy efficiency efforts on existing homes (Your Letters)

To the Editor:

The recent pause on the implementation of New York state’s 2023 All-Electric Buildings Act provides an important opportunity for practical reflection (“NY puts off implementing law that would ban natural gas in new homes and buildings,” Nov. 12, 2025). Those of us in the residential construction industry share the state’s commitment to improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions. We also understand, better than anyone, the unintended consequences of such well-intended policies and how they impact the real-world, practical challenges to providing safe, functional and affordable homes for New Yorkers.

It’s important to understand that even with this pause, the newly adopted New York state residential building and energy codes are still moving forward — and many of their provisions will increase the cost of both new home construction and existing home renovation. The updated codes introduce significant changes to insulation standards, air sealing, mechanical ventilation and overall energy-efficiency performance. Meeting these requirements will involve new materials, additional testing procedures and more extensive compliance documentation — all of which add time and expense, further straining housing affordability that is already stretched thin.

Central New York’s residential construction professionals appreciate the efforts of our lawmakers to improve the efficiency of new home construction and encourage them to use this pause to explore practical, real-world alternatives that could deliver greater results across New York’s housing stock. Meanwhile, home builders are fully prepared to construct all-electric homes for buyers who choose them.

Policymakers must recognize that the greatest opportunity to meaningfully reduce emissions lies not only in new construction, but in improving the vast inventory of older homes that are drafty, inefficient and far more common than newly built residences. Expanding weatherization programs, increasing incentives for air sealing, and supporting targeted upgrades to existing homes would produce far greater environmental benefits — and at a much lower cost — than placing additional burdens on the comparatively small share of new homes built each year.

If New York is serious about lowering energy use and reducing carbon emissions, improving the performance of existing homes must become a priority. Strengthening support for residential solar installations and expanding programs that help homeowners and landlords weatherize, insulate and modernize older buildings will lower energy consumption, consumer costs and move the state further and faster toward its climate goals than regulation.

Our association and our industry stand ready to work with state agencies, policymakers and energy experts to work to ensure that New Yorkers can access homes that are both energy-efficient and affordable. With partnership and clarity, New York can advance its climate objectives without pricing homeownership even further out of reach for working families. Thoughtful collaboration — not rushed mandates — is the path to achieving both, and to preserving the American Dream in our great state of New York.

Mary M. Gohl-Thompson

CEO

Home Builders & Remodelers of Central New York

Syracuse