I urge the Virginia Board of Housing and Community Development to amend the Uniform Statewide Building Code to meet or exceed the 2018 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for all forms of construction covered by Virginia's Uniform Statewide Building Code. Energy Efficiency (met by conservation, reduction in use/demand of energy with supporting building codes, etc.) is a low hanging fruit to pick for reducing energy demand and use, and a long lasting way to reduce green house gas emissions in the state. It also provides a healthier living and working environment for our residents, which turns into lower health costs, and much higher productivity for our employed citizens. I have worked on numerous energy efficiency projects with energy companies who increase the energy efficiency for institutions of higher education, municipalities, states, commercial entities and residences. There are a set of codes, and a path to providing energy efficiency be it in our utilities, in our government buildings and in our ways of life at work and at home. It is a win win situation for all of us. We create jobs by increasing efficiency in new construction, and retrofitting older built environments. We employ energy efficient products (lighting, appliances, building materials and practices) all of which exist. There are no barriers to employing new energy conservation building codes than to simply adopt them. No one loses in this. Reducing the 60% (recently quoted by our VA legislators) consumption of energy that our built environments use in VA by energy efficiency measures supports the goals of the VCEA, and does not costs tax payers money that they won't recoup. There are clear pathways to do this achieved in other states. What is VA waiting for? Please make these important changes now. Thank you.