A new report from Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality urges the state to give people incentives to live in smaller homes or disincentives to live in larger ones. A Life Cycle Approach to Prioritizing Methods of Preventing Waste from the Residential Construction Sector reviews the energy costs of various styles of homes and comes to the startling conclusion that larger homes require more energy than smaller ones. (How much did it cost to figure that one out?)
The report therefore recommends that the state “place incentives on smaller homes or disincentives on larger homes.” Why? If someone needs a bigger home, and they are willing to pay for it, why should the state care? Despite the coy use of the term “incentives,” what they really mean is coercive measures to arbitrarily make larger homes more expensive to force more people to live in smaller houses.
