This paper used the cost‐optimal principle of EPBD2010 and building envelop thermal analysis to investigate the energy conservation effect and cost efficiency of existing energy conservation design code of building envelop in Taiwan. This paper firstly pointed out the Germany’s passive house certification system which emphasizing the energy conservation technology of high insulation and high airtight design which origin in cold climatic is not march the cost‐optimal strategy of building energy conservation in hot or warm climates, then analyzed a series of papers from 2008 which have revealed that more building envelop insulation or double skin design in subtropical climates might lead the increasing phenomenon of AC energy consumption, so called anti-insulation effect, so as to appeal the tropical and subtropical countries should not to introduce the cold climate’s building energy conservation technologies of high insulation and high airtight design of building envelop to prevent the opposite effect of energy conservation. Through analyzing the air conditioning thermal load distributions in 303 Asian countries for a house and an office building space, this paper found that the anti-insulation effect of residential building appeals to more significant in southerner tropical Taiwan and the anti-insulation effect of office or commercial building appeals to more significant in northerner subtropical Taiwan, it is no doubt that Taiwan is located among tropical and subtropical climates which are the most significant areas of anti-insulation effect, so that the existing Taiwan’s building energy design regulation should to be avoided to strengthen the insulation and airtight code of building envelop to avoid the anti-effect of energy conservation. As the same time, this paper analyzed the strict level of envelop insulation code of residential building in 12 cities from cold to tropical climates by comparing the annual indoor-outdoor temperature difference and the thermal transmission rate U value of the local building regulations and found Taiwan’s existing building envelop insulation code is close to a very appropriate strict standard and could be considered as a cost‐optimal level among the 12 cities. Finally, this paper analyzed the total energy conservation potential of building envelop, air conditioning and lighting by the criteria of 50% energy saving rate in nearly zero carbon building definition and found that the energy conservation potential in air conditioning and lighting design is about to 4.7~7.1 times comparing to building envelop design. So that, to consider both the anti-insulation effect and cost‐optimal strategy, Taiwan’s net zero building policy is not necessary to strengthen the existing building envelop regulation and need more aggressive to promote the mandatory legalization in the energy efficiency design of air conditioning and lighting design which is higher CP value and more energy saving power.