Colorado’s headlong rush toward zero carbon emissions will drive the soaring cost of housing even higher. That’s the upshot of a Colorado think tank’s study of the pending “electrification” of homes in the state.

A new law enacted this year by the legislature would pave the way for mandating that all newly built homes are wired for electricity for cooking, heating, hot water and electric-vehicle charging. That would add significantly to the cost of a new home — between $6,450 and $22,352 per home, the study concludes.

The sweeping policy shift ushered in by House Bill 1362 — which, through a convoluted chain of events, will result in the adoption of local “green” building codes — would lead to the retrofitting of existing homes for electrification, as well.

All of which could cost Colorado homeowners $59 billion to $68 billion by 2031 and would exacerbate Colorado’s acute housing shortage, according to the study released last week by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute.

As reported Friday by The Gazette, Green-leaning Democrats who wield all the levers of power in state government soft-pedal the transition and discount the cost projections of the study’s findings. A spokeswoman for Gov. Jared Polis claimed the law will protect homeowners’ bottom line and, “will have a huge upside for renters, including those in disproportionately impacted communities, who will see lower utility bills in buildings constructed under the law’s new model low energy and carbon code.”

On a wing and a prayer, perhaps.

The Common Sense report seems far more rooted in reality. Evelyn Lim, the author of the institute’s report and a former regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, points out for example that the state’s projected savings on a typical household’s utility bills under the new law would have to accrue for over 17 years before it would pay for the added, up-front costs of electrification.

“That is longer than the average length of time a homeowner stays in their home,” Lim notes.

The new law incurs the costs in a roundabout, and highly bureaucratized, way. It sets up a 24-member Energy Code Board that would develop model language for electric-ready, solar-ready, low-energy-and-carbon codes complying with the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code. Colorado municipalities will have to amend their building codes to standards that provide equivalent or better performance than the 2021 code.

While the new building code itself does not specify what kind of energy must be used in new construction, Lim say that the code, when combined with the Colorado Clean Heat program that requires providers of natural gas to reduce emissions, creates the pressure to upgrade to all-electric appliances and abandon natural gas.

The Common Sense report views the ultimate goal of the green heat and electrification plan as the electrification of all homes and businesses — old and new — and the report calculates the electrification of commercial buildings could cost another $17.9 billion.

But here’s the clincher: The U.S. Department of Energy determined that the 2021 IECC standard was merely 9% more efficient than the 2018 version. As builder and GOP state Senate candidate Tim Walsh told The Gazette, that return on investment just doesn’t add up.

“The issue is we’re at a point of diminishing returns and we’re adding a lot of cost to get a very incremental increase in overall building performance,” Walsh said. “That’s going to have a huge economic impact, especially on the lowest wage earners in Colorado.”

The new policy is a costly, feel-good exercise in wishful thinking — of dubious benefit in addressing climate change. Will it take a changing of the guard at the legislature to hit the brakes?