Wasting resources in the name of conserving resources

I've long wondered it some data wasn't going to come in about green building codes that might cause us to rethink the excitement over them in the construction industry.   Here  it is:

Green building codes have failed to conserve energy use in the nation’s most populated state, according to a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

California, currently home to 12 percent of the United States population, enacted energy building codes for the first time in 1978. The codes were projected to reduce residential energy use and its associated pollution by 80 percent. Instead, buildings constructed after the green energy codes took effect are not using less energy than homes built prior to the codes.

The supposedly-green codes added $8,000 to the construction cost of a new home. That’s essentially an $8,000 tax on new homes, with little public benefit.

The study was conducted by Arik Levinson, an economics professor at Georgetown University. Levinson’s results were published by the NBER Working Paper Series.

Levinson's team accounted for all the variables that might have led to an apples-to-oranges conclusion.

It's just a lot of money that hs unnecessarily moved from one pocket to another in our economy, and time that can't be retrieved.