Tier 2 Rulemaking: Energy Benchmarking & Support

Today’s Clean Buildings Performance Standard Rulemaking Workshop covered Customer Outreach, Technical Support, and Energy Benchmarking.

SB 5722 was signed into law in March 2022, expanding the Clean Buildings Performance Standard to Tier 2 buildings, that is, commercial buildings between 20,000 and 50,000 square feet of gross floor area, and multifamily residential buildings over 20,000 square feet of gross floor area. Today’s workshop was the second in a series of rulemaking workshops for the Clean Buildings Expansion Law. See the schedule slide below for future workshops, and see dates and links to register here.

The full slidedeck will be made available on the Clean Buildings website.

Important Proposed Changes

This week Commerce published a draft of the proposed changes to the Standard for Tier 2, which can be found here. Below are some highlights of changes from earlier versions.

Tier 2 buildings will be required to calculate an EUIt using the Tier 1 formula but will not be required to meet this EUIt to comply in the 2027 cycle.

Tier 2 buildings, unlike Tier 1 buildings, will not require a Qualified Person to submit for compliance in the 2027 compliance cycle.

Multifamily residential buildings with multiple owners, such as condo buildings are exempt from the Standard.

This last highlight is based on proposed updated definitions including:

connected buildings: a collection of covered buildings owned by the same building owner that are situated on the same or adjacent parcels and have shared energy meters.
contiguous property: adjoining property under sole ownership
multifamily residential building: a covered multifamily building of sole ownership containing sleeping units or more than five dwelling units where occupants are primarily permanent in nature.

Read the full document of proposed changes related to the workshop here and leave feedback using the public comment form.