At its Sept. 9, 2026 business meeting, the California Energy Commission presented Item 8 on residential state certification for the 2025 Energy Code, with staff asking commissioners to approve the residential analysis tied to a federal filing deadline.
According to the commission’s Item 8 summary, federal law requires states to review and certify updates to their building energy codes after a Department of Energy affirmative determination, and California must submit the residential certification by Dec. 30, 2026. The same summary says California already submitted its commercial code certification on March 6, 2026.
A briefing artifact associated with the item identifies Will Vicent, the commission’s deputy director of building standards in the Efficiency Division, as the presenter. It also says the 2025 Energy Code takes effect Jan. 1, 2026 and frames the residential certification request as a required step in California’s building-code compliance process.
The briefing says staff asked the commission to approve certification that the residential analysis exceeds DOE equivalency requirements. It also says the code analysis found the 2025 Energy Code is at least as stringent as national model energy codes, though the retrieved materials do not show in this reporting whether commissioners voted on the item or whether they amended the staff request.
The supporting summary says the commission’s analysis points to broader benefits from the 2025 code, including energy-cost savings and reduced emissions, but the most concrete action before commissioners was the residential certification request itself.
