Cascade Built Blog
July 28, 2009
Washington State energy bill takes effect this week
Posted by admin, 5:19 PM
This spring, governor Gregoire signed into law a bill that sets an energy policy framework for non-residential buildings in this state through 2031 (SB5854). One of the first provisions is to require utilities to support benchmarking of building performance by mandating that they provide data to building owners in a format usable by federal EPA benchmark programs such as Portfolio Manager. Utilities must comply by Jan 1, 2010.
Other measures incrementally take effect, including requiring building owners & sellers to provide benchmarked energy use data to prospective buyers & tenants. This may become more of a factor in property values, and therefore drive owners to consider energy upgrades.
The bill includes provisions to develop methods to benchmark and rate residential structures as well, but this has been stongly opposed by industry groups such as the National Association of Realtors.
Oh, did I mention that washington state energy codes are also tightening up? A 30% increase in performance will go into effect in 2009/2010. This is good news for climate change, the economy, contractors, designers, building owners, and tenants. The bill went into effect this week.
