It's probably going to vary state by state. In CA they've shifted the responsibility to the owner to hire a third party (private) HERS raters or acceptance tester. Customers love shelling out extra money for that. The state tried to make it easy by creating a web-based system that contractors register to before, during, and after, but it's anything but easy. As the city inspector I come and verify compliance with codes, the way I verify energy code compliance is by seeing their HERS or acceptance test report showing compliance. Done. It's been in code (CA has it's own unique energy code) that way for a while (2013?) but it seems like it's still "brand new" to most contractors here. Many throw their hands up and say "well I'm never working here again" or something to that effect. Then you have the reach codes and that's a whole other ball of sticky wax that gums everything up... "Hey let's ban natural gas, even though that's what powers our PG&E plant..." Not my business though, I just do my job and be thankful that I'm scraping by.
