Sponsors (13)
The bill preserves state control and avoids immediate compliance and administrative costs for homeowners, renters, and federal agencies, but it sacrifices potential household energy savings, slows national emissions progress, and creates regulatory uncertainty for builders.
Homeowners and renters keep current construction rules and avoid immediate retrofit or compliance costs that a new federal efficiency standard would have imposed.
States retain authority to set their own building standards because federal enforcement of the new standard is blocked, preserving local control over codes.
Federal housing agencies (HUD, USDA, VA, FHFA) avoid the administrative burden and implementation costs associated with rolling out the new federal energy-efficiency rule.
Homeowners and renters may miss out on lower utility bills and improved energy performance that stronger federal efficiency standards would have delivered.
Removing federal leadership reduces incentives for wider adoption of stronger energy codes, slowing nationwide emissions reductions and prolonging higher long-term energy costs and environmental harms, disproportionately affecting low-income and rural communities.
Manufacturers and builders lose regulatory certainty for future projects if federal standards are blocked, complicating planning and potentially raising costs for consumers and developers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Withdraws HUD/USDA final rule adopting new energy-efficiency standards for federally financed housing, bars similar actions by VA and FHFA, and requires 26 States to adopt codes before federal consideration of revisions.
Directs HUD and USDA to withdraw and not implement the recent final rule that adopted new energy efficiency standards for HUD- and USDA-financed new construction, and restores the prior standards that applied before that rule. It also bars the VA and the Federal Housing Finance Agency from implementing or enforcing substantially similar energy-efficiency determinations or rules for single- and multifamily housing, and raises the statutory threshold for federal consideration of a revised model energy code to require adoption by at least 26 States.
Official title: Require the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the Secretary of Agriculture to withdraw a final determination relating to energy efficiency standards for housing, and for other purposes.
Introduced November 18, 2025 by John A. Barrasso · Last progress November 18, 2025