This week in buildings, land and industry decarbonization news, The Energyst wrote up a study showing how artificial intelligence could actually help lower emissions. The peer-reviewed study in Nature Communications goes against many headlines about the potentially huge energy demand to highlight how the technology could be used to optimize building energy, HVAC and other systems to save 8 to 19% of their energy use and even more when combined with other supportive policies.

Building energy codes, like appliance efficiency standards, are not immune from politics as seen in HousingWire’s story on a group of Senate Republicans who want to repeal the latest codes. The departments of Housing and Urban Development and Agriculture update the codes every few years, but with rising house prices and a November election, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and colleagues argue the new codes, which are more expensive up front, should not be implemented. A companion bill was introduced in the House, but little legislation is going to move with a split government and at this late date in an election year.

Cost of living issues are impacting politics on both sides of the aisle, with California working to lower its consumers’ rising monthly electricity bills to encourage continued electrification. One area that is funded on those bills are the utility-run efficiency programs and the Natural Resources Defense Council has a blog post arguing that their funding should be untouched by the effort. Unlike many other line items from power bills, the efficiency spending comes directly back to consumers who benefited to the tune of $5 billion last year with every dollar invested yielding $8.49 in return.

Renewable Energy World has the details on the Department of Energy’s Save On Clean Energy Campaign, which seeks to educate consumers about the wide array of subsidies and tax credits made available to them under the Inflation Reduction Act. The law was passed two years ago, but unsurprisingly most Americans do not know about it, according to a survey the article quotes.

Rounding out the summary here are a couple stories on heat pumps. One is about DOE awarding $488 million to expand their use in Alaska and New England from Canary Media. Alaska and New England are no strangers to winter, while the San Joaquin Valley in central California regularly sees temperatures approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Energy News Network published an op-ed arguing for wider adoption of heat pumps to keep residents cool.

Read all those articles and more in this week’s Intelligence Report: