The adoption rate of building energy standards in the US has been increasing since the mid-
1990s as a result of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct). However, most of the evidence on the
energy savings that accrue from commercial building energy standards is based on engineering
simulations, which do not account for realized behavior once a standard is actually adopted.
This paper uses plausibly exogenous variation in commercial building energy standard adoptions,
combined with a unique state-level dataset on electricity consumption, energy prices, and the
prevalence of “plus-utilities” tenancy contracts in commercial buildings, to estimate the realized
electricity consumption response to commercial energy codes. The results suggest that in states
with a large fraction of post-EPAct new construction under a code, per capita commercial
electricity consumption is lower by about 13%. In addition, a one percentage point increase in
the rate of tenancy contracts where tenants pay directly for energy utilities is associated with a
1% decrease in per capita electricity demand. The realized energy savings are less than half of
predicted simulated savings
