Seattle to require commercial, multi-family buildings to report energy stats

The Seattle City Council, building on a 2009 state law covering commercial buildings, has adopted an ordinance that will make energy performance data for commercial  and multi-family buildings available annually to tenants, prospective tenants, would-be buyers and lenders.

The City Council’s unanimous vote is a wise step toward solving one of the most persistent barriers to greater energy efficiency savings: a lack of useful information to guide building-level energy saving decisions.

The city measure will apply to all commercial buildings larger than 10,000 square feet and multi-family buildings of five or more residences. Commercial buildings greater than 50,000 square feet are to deliver the first annual report to the city Department of Planning and Development in April 2011, buildings bigger than 10,000 square feet and multi-family places start reporting in 2012. The multi-family market will see a test program in 2010-11 to iron out anticipated difficulties in obtaining data from renters responsible for their portion of building energy bills.

Seattle’s foray into energy performance disclosure has important differences from the state law it follows. The most obvious is the extension to multi-family residential, a big energy-efficiency opportunity not covered by the state law. Others:

• The city ordinance extends the list of eligible recipients of the energy data to existing tenants and residents and city Department of Planning and Development. The state law allows only prospective tenants, buyers and lenders to see energy performance metrics.
• The city law will require annual reporting of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star Portfolio Manager (that’s the tool to keep track of building energy use) data, whereas the state only requires disclosure when a building is sold or space in it is leased.

You can get all the wonky details at the City Clerk’s web site.

There are a couple of things the dry language of the ordinance itself won’t tell you. First, giving real estate market players better information about energy efficiency in buildings will go a long way toward motivating building owners and operators to make their buildings greener and, therefore, more valuable. Second, a widespread annual view of building energy use will give policy makers an unprecedented tool to guide sensible energy policy in the future.

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