At their meeting on November 8, 2006, the AHFC Board of Directors adopted changes to the Alaska Building Energy Efficiency Standard (BEES) proposed by a CCHRC work group. These changes include Alaska Amendments to IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 62.2-2004. Residential buildings must meet this standard to qualify for a low-interest loan from AHFC. Though BEES is supposed to be updated at least every three years, it had been more than a decade since it had been amended. Significant changes had occurred in the ASHRAE ventilation standard and the cost of energy had risen dramatically.

We were tasked by AHFC to recommend updates to BEES. We convened a work group to review the existing BEES and the proposed changes from a previous review, as well as other suggestions made to AHFC, the new ASHRAE residential ventilation standard, and the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). While BEES applies only to issues under AHFC purview, we also took note of the process undertaken by ASHBA to consider a statewide building code, especially because that group had determined to use the International Residential Code as the basis for their work.

Considering the recurrent complaint that BEES was not written in "code language," we decided to restate BEES in terms of the IECC 2006 and to include the new ASHRAE 62.2-2004 residential ventilation standard as part of the code for Alaska. When we recognized that several aspects of both the IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 62.2-2004 would not work in Alaska, we proposed a set of Alaska-specific amendments for AHFC adoption along with regulatory actions to redefine BEES.

We generally tried to follow the IECC standards set forth in the old BEES. Occasionally, we made slight compromises to fit the two together, and had to extend the IECC climate zones to fit the range of conditions in Alaska. Recognizing the increased costs of energy, we dropped the special natural gas zone (2G) in the Anchorage area and proposed an increase in the minimum R-values for windows and skylights. The process for the performance compliance path (energy rating) was unchanged.

For the adopted changes, please note that the amendments are intended to be read along with the documents that they amend; namely, the International Energy Code 2006 and the ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2004 Ventilations and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Low-rise Residential Buildings. While the proposed changes were presented at many different statewide meetings over the past two years, it is natural that many busy people didn't take the time to carefully review these changes until after the AHFC Board adopted them. There are several groups now doing so. We will consider their concerns and recommend additional changes to the AHFC Board.