The Hampshire County Housing Conversation held at UMass on March 25 highlighted a real and urgent problem: we are not building enough housing in western Massachusetts. The data presented by Kerry Spitzer and the Donahue Institute makes the scale of the shortfall unmistakable — 23,000 units needed in our region alone. On that, every speaker was right.
But when the conversation turned to why housing costs so much to build, I was troubled by how quickly energy codes became the convenient villain. Jeff Bagg, Amherst’s planning director, suggested that energy code adoption “feels good and … feels right” but is “making the actual construction costs continue to go up.” Alexis Breiteneicher of Valley Community Development went further, claiming that all-electrification “adds cost on continued operation because electricity is wildly more expensive than other fossil based sources of energy” and that the systems are “much more complex” than what we have workforce to support.
These claims deserve a respectful but direct correction. When they go unchallenged in a public forum, they shape policy in the wrong direction.
Neither the Stretch Code nor the Specialized Stretch Energy Code is imposed on anyone. Communities adopt them voluntarily — and they are gaining traction quickly. The reason is practical: adoption unlocks significant energy-related grants that towns are using to reduce operating expenses, improve municipal buildings, and prepare for an increasingly unstable energy future. Framing these codes as a burden misrepresents how they actually work.
The most discussed provision of the Specialized Stretch Code is its requirement that larger multifamily projects achieve Passive House certification — a standard focused on a robust building enclosure, dramatically lower heating and cooling loads, and excellent indoor comfort. I understand the scrutiny. But projects already built to this standard tell an encouraging story. The Bunker Hill redevelopment in Boston — a 15-building Passive House project — has seen each successive building become more cost-effective, with developers now targeting costs below code-minimum construction by rethinking sequencing, materials, and processes. Innovations like panelization and off-site construction are making this possible. The construction industry needs to evolve, and a time of labor shortages is exactly the moment to modernize how we build.
Are overall construction costs rising? Absolutely. But energy codes are a small fraction of that increase. Lumber, labor, insurance, permitting timelines, and land costs have all surged. Let’s not scapegoat the building envelope while ignoring the forces that actually dominate the cost equation.
The claim that electricity is “wildly more expensive” than fossil fuels is misleading. Heat pumps deliver two to four units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed. When you account for that efficiency and eliminate the gas service charges, propane deliveries, or oil infrastructure that fossil systems require, all-electric homes come out ahead on total operating cost. For new construction built to modern energy codes, heating and cooling loads are dramatically lower — the building simply needs less energy to stay comfortable — making heat pumps the most cost-effective approach from day one. The reputation problems heat pumps have acquired stem largely from poorly designed retrofit installations in older homes. That is a design problem, not a technology problem.
There’s also a dimension of energy cost the forum missed: security. Fossil fuel prices are subject to global volatility no municipality can control. The current conflict with Iran and resulting spike in oil prices is the latest reminder. The best hedge against that instability is conservation — using less energy in the first place. That is exactly what better building codes deliver.
Is there a workforce gap for electrification in western Massachusetts? Yes. But that’s an argument for investing in training, not for retreating to outdated practices. We should be preparing the next generation of workers for the systems buildings will need for the next 50 years, not the last 50.
I share the urgency every speaker expressed. We need more housing, faster, at every price point. But we won’t solve that crisis by blaming the building codes that protect residents’ long-term costs. The real barriers — zoning, permitting delays, land costs, material inflation, and the resistance to change that accompanies any new development — were all present in the room that night.
Our built environment is evolving, as every other aspect of our world is. The question isn’t whether that change is coming, but whether we shape it deliberately or react to it after the fact. Energy codes are one of the tools that let us build deliberately. They deserve our support, not our suspicion.
Adin Maynard is a Certified HERS Rater, chair of the Williamsburg Energy Committee, and founder of AQM, Inc.