Owners of hundreds of buildings across D.C. will soon be required to make investments to improve their energy performance under a sweeping new law.
Carol M. Highsmith via Wikimedia Commons An aerial view of D.C.’s Central Business District and East End The D.C. Council passed a bill Dec. 18 aimed at addressing climate change by reducing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions that has been lauded as “historic,” “groundbreaking” and the “strongest climate legislation” in the nation. The bill, which Mayor Muriel Bowser plans to sign into law Friday, calls for cutting D.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2032.
With a majority of D.C.’s emissions coming from buildings, the bill puts heavy responsibility on property owners to improve their sustainability in the coming years. HOK Director of Sustainability Anica Landreneau, who serves on the D.C. Green Building Advisory Council, estimates about 50% of D.C.’s buildings will need to improve their energy performance.
The exact threshold for which buildings will be affected has yet to be determined. The bill gives the D.C. Department of Energy & Environment until 2021 to establish a standard Energy Star score that buildings must meet, and it requires that standard to be at least at the level of D.C.’s current median score.
Once the standard is established, buildings above 50K SF will have five years to make improvements or pay a fine. That net will gradually widen to all buildings above 10K SF by 2026.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Jon Banister over at Bis Now