The important role of energy codes in achieving resilience

Building codes are an essential strategy in achieving resilience. Building codes provide minimum requirements to protect life-safety in the built environment—every day and particularly in the face of hazards. Energy codes are no exception. Code-based strategies to enhance community resilience must be coordinated across all building codes including energy, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, and fire codes. While energy codes have primarily developed to enhance energy efficiency (a resilience goal in and of itself), they also are an important contributor to individual and community resilience in other ways. This paper examines the intersection of energy and resilience (here labeled the energy/resilience nexus) and the important role of energy codes in supporting community resilience. It is a supplement to the recent report Building Community Resilience through Modern Model Building Codes and the second in a series of white papers on how various codes contribute to resilience.