#22 - Ian Finlayson Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources’ stretch code

So in 2007, 2008, Massachusetts developed this stretch code.

Can you describe what the stretch code was then and what it's developed into now?

And I

guess also we should ask, I guess we need to describe what is a stretch code compared to a normal

code.

So if we go back to like 2007, Massachusetts was no different than our neighboring states.

We kind of supported the IECC.

We adopted ASHRAE for commercial code.

But we were starting to get towns and cities, so some towns on Cape Cod and cities like Boston and a bunch of the major cities around Boston saying, hey, we should be doing something about green building, should be doing something about climate.

We want to do our own thing.

And we had seen like folks like Long Island, I think had adopted like Energy Star Homes for residential using HERS ratings.

We had a fairly newish new construction utility program that was using HERS raters.

But there wasn't too much going on at that time, but there was real concern about having Multiple cities and towns do their own thing and just complicate the construction landscape for everybody.

So I was in the executive agency at that time writing legislation, but I got put on this project to say, look, can we find some common ground? Can we have like one alternative? that cities and towns could opt into instead of them, you know, Boston doing LEED for commercial and a town on the Cape doing Energy Star for residential and there being this kind of patchwork.

And so we called that a stretch code.

I think on the West Coast it was being called like a reach code around the same time.

The idea of allowing municipalities, cities or towns or counties to kind of go above the minimum statewide code So that's what I'm referring to when I talk about a stretch code.

And it was a very narrow vote.

I remember we won the vote with our independent board of building regulations and standards.

I think it was like a five to four vote to say yes to a stretch code on a sort of cold afternoon in 2007.

Yeah.

And we've kind of come a long way from there.

And how do they reflect on that moment now? Are people happy that this got adopted?

I mean, it's certainly been a lot more popular than we expected, right? At the time, we were hearing from maybe five to eight communities that wanted to do their own thing.

So we thought, okay, if we adopt this stretch code, maybe it'll get adopted by, I think somewhere down the line, I was asked how many people are gonna adopt this.