HB 1390 Campus District Energy Systems
House Bill 1390 was signed into law on May 4, 2023 and requires Commerce to update the Clean Buildings Performance Standard with new requirements and an alternative compliance path for campus district energy systems. It goes into effect July 23, 2023.
State-owned district energy systems will be required to follow this compliance pathway. For other district energy systems, it is optional.
HB 1390 offers an alternative compliance pathway for district energy systems, recognizing that “upgrading existing district energy systems has great potential to increase efficiency, oftentimes more so than a building-by-building approach,” however developing and upgrading campus district energy systems may take many years and multiple budget cycles. The alternative path considers the next 15 years and beyond in the planning for these systems. Take a look at these important changes made to the Clean Buildings Act by HB 1390:
Campus district energy systems following this pathway must develop a decarbonization plan providing a strategy at least 15 years into the future. This plan must be submitted - and approved by - the Department of Commerce. Decarbonization plan development must begin by June 30, 2024, and a final plan must be submitted to Commerce by June 30, 2025.
If campus district energy systems are implementing a decarbonization plan approved by Commerce, have performed energy benchmarking and have implemented compliant energy management and operations & maintenance plans, they will not be required to meet the energy use intensity targets for buildings connected to the district energy system.
A campus district energy system under the Standard will be considered one where three or more buildings with more than 100,000 square feet are served by a distributed heating and/or cooling system.
For more information and a summary of the bill, check out the Senate Bill Report from March. To stay up to date on the latest Clean Buildings news, make sure to subscribe to Sershon Systems’ newsletter.
