The growth of the population and changing demands have become a significant problem due to the limited resources of the earth. Climate change has increased the occurrence of natural events and probable disasters due to insufficient infrastructure. The economic, environmental, and social aspects of the problem necessitate sustainable practices. On the other hand, probable disaster dictates design decisions to keep the physical environment intact and resilient. Hence, the expectations from the construction industry are high. The industry also needs to tackle the task of lowering the existing high consumption levels of natural resources and energy. Being resilient under seismic events is paramount for the areas that have high seismicity. The general trend of using less material for sustainability purposes conflicts with the resilient seismic design decisions which typically cause an increase in the initial consumptions. The studies on resilience and sustainability hint that there might be design opportunities that serve both purposes together. In this study, such an opportunity for RC residential buildings is focused. The resilience and energy cost of a conventional moment-resisting frame and the same frame with increased robustness through the addition of shear walls are studied. It is presumed in addition to the increased robustness, the thermal impact of the additional concrete mass will create an advantage for energy consumption in the life cycle of the building. The design decision for shear walls is based on the proposal by Hassan and Sozen (1997). Nonlinear time history analysis is performed for both frames according to Turkish Earthquake Regulation. Results show that the robust frame has the needed resilience. The energy analysis shows that the frame with shear walls has significantly higher consumption initially. However, when the thermal impact of the concrete is included in the full life cycle, the energy consumption difference reduces from 18% to 4%. As a result, it could be stated that providing sufficient robustness to the structure by shear walls at targeted locations provides an opportunity to have a resilient and sustainable structure with a minor increase in total energy cost throughout the life cycle of the structure.