Local-level Regulatory Activity Accelerates

The regulatory and legislative landscape remains dynamic, according to Urmilla Sowell, vice president of advocacy and technical services for the National Glass Association, and Tom Culp, owner, Birch Point Consulting, and NGA energy code contractor. At this year’s Building Envelope Contractor’s Conference, the two industry experts highlighted important legislation, opportunities for advocacy and resources available to allow companies to stay current with regulatory requirements.

Advocacy results in building code daylighting win

The presentation started with an advocacy win for the glass industry; as part of the 2027 International Building Code cycle, the NGA team—in conjunction with the Aluminum Extruders Council and the American Institute of Architects—successfully submitted two proposals at the International Code Council’s Committee Action Hearings that ensure a “right to light” in classrooms, guaranteeing daylighting for a better learning environment. Juan Miro, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and a member of AIA, collaborated with the advocacy team after his own university built a “windowless dorm” that didn’t offer sufficient daylight to student residents. After the conference, NGA’s proposals on daylighting were passed at the April ICC hearings in Hartford, Connecticut, moving them closer to the final phase of the process. 

The BEC presenters also addressed national and international energy codes, speaking to how a change in presidential administration would transform the code landscape. Culp shared that his prediction from last year had come to pass; he is seeing more incremental change in energy requirements at the federal level, with more code interventions happening on the state and local levels. The result is a codes landscape that is “a little more whack-a-mole and chaotic, but also presents both opportunities and threats.” 

Part of that mixed picture is due to the different localities enacting code requirements. While blue states like California, Colorado and Minnesota have implemented new energy codes, Missouri’s state legislature has seen a bill pass out of committee that would retract residential and commercial energy codes backwards to the 2009 IECC, Culp explains.

Other threats include continued attacks on window area, Culp said, including contemporary proposals that would halve the window allowance for row houses, and another proposal that would revisit commercial envelope backstops in the modeling paths of ASHRAE 90.1 specifically to target glass buildings.  

Culp also talked about the potential future for Energy Star, which is a voluntary above-code program that rates largely residential building products towards the goal of influencing energy consumption and occupant comfort. In 2025, the Trump administration announced plans to dissolve the office in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that administered the program, effectively ending Energy Star. After industry pushback, the program has been revived. “Energy Star is still there, still alive,” Culp says, but the residential and commercial energy tax credits will sunset by the end of the year. 

While the future of that program remains uncertain, Culp reminded the audience that NGA has partnered with the Partnership for Advanced Window Solutions, or PAWS, to pass a utility incentive for commercial windows in Minnesota.  

NGA collaboration on EPD generation and circularity 

Beyond energy codes, NGA’s Advocacy and Technical team has also seen continued industry demand for Environmental Product Declarations, documents which offer a standardized and transparent way to understand the environmental impact of products.​ New legislation is incentivizing the reduction of embodied carbon, like New Mexico’s new rebate program for purchasing low-carbon construction materials. 

Since last year, NGA has partnered with TrueNorth Collective, a sustainability consultancy, to help create an EPD generator tool for the glass industry. That work now also involves the AEC, whose members produce about 60% of aluminum extrusions in the U.S. and Canada. Lynn Brown, a managing principal of Long Point Associates and an AEC consultant, joined Culp and Sowell on stage to explain the organization’s own EPD journey, from their first industry-average EPD in 2015 to current demands for product-specific, and more recent data. After a data collection process, AEC released its own EPD generator tool for aluminum extrusions in mid-2025, which is also available to NGA members.