CHEYENNE, WY — While many other states in the nation are instituting green building programs, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal recently stated that he will not mandate green building codes in his state, according to the New York Times.
In an interview on Monday after he spoke at the Western States Energy and Environment Symposium, Freudenthal ruled out mandates for stricter building efficiency codes or energy standards for appliances, the story stated.
According to the story, Wyoming, which is among the nation's top producers of coal, oil, natural gas and wind power, has consistently finished last in state rankings for energy efficiency.
Freudenthal recently signed a letter to the Department of Energy promising renewed efforts to boost energy efficiency as a condition of receiving certain federal stimulus money from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the story noted.
Freudenthal said: "We're not a state that's going to do building codes. Building codes are local — I mean, they're very aggressive here in Teton County. One of the difficulties we face is that the relatively uncontroversial subject of energy efficiency must first be disentangled from a traditional Wyoming resistance to building codes. For the marginal gain that you would get out of all the blood that you would lose trying to regulate whether or not somebody could buy a non-five-star appliance in Wyoming, it makes no sense. We'll do a lot more good if we set it up so that the utilities can align the pricing right.”
According to the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) database, there are only seven Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified projects in the state of Wyoming.
Freudenthal feels that mandating energy efficiency requirements for the state would require "a significant shift in public opinion in Wyoming" and would not be a smart or logical move, the story added.
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