Southampton Town Adopts NYStretch Energy Code

Following in the footsteps of East Hampton Town, the Southampton Town Board adopted the NYStretch Energy Code — a more stringent energy efficiency code for houses and commercial buildings — in an effort to continue promoting sustainability, environmental protection and energy conservation through legislation.

The Board unanimously approved the resolution on December 14, which modified the Home Energy Rating System standards to incorporate NYStretch as a component of the town’s existing Energy Conservation Code.

“This is one of many steps that the town and state have taken toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy dependence,” said Councilman John Bouvier, lead sponsor of the resolution, in a press release. “It’s visionary in some ways, and hopefully it will encourage other municipalities, our neighbors in this region, to continue to push toward these goals.”

Created by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, NYStretch is designed to make new buildings 11 percent more energy efficient than the standard state building code requires. Adopting NYStretch is completely voluntary for towns and villages, but the state has sweetened the pot by offering grant money to those who do: $5,000 for municipalities with up to 40,000 residents, and $50,000 to larger municipalities.

In recent years, Southampton Town has focused on reducing energy consumption through land use via code amendments and programs that specifically target a reduction in energy consumption by requiring high efficiencies for all new or substantially reconstructed residential dwellings, according to the press release. The new code is 10 to 12 percent more efficient than the minimum requirements of the 2020 Energy Conservation Construction Code of New York State, it said.