Committee reviews building-performance standards study backed by U.S. Department of Energy

At a meeting of the Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Committee, Chairwoman Council Member Mika Owens invited city staff and outside experts to brief the committee on progress toward building benchmarking and building performance standards for Cincinnati.

The briefing centered on the 2023 Green Cincinnati Plan goals — a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050 — and on a U.S. Department of Energy-funded project supporting four Ohio cities to design policies that would reduce emissions from the built environment. Rob McCracken, energy manager with the Office of Environment and Sustainability (OES), said "a little over 60% of emissions come from the built environment," and that BPS and benchmarking are tools the city is exploring to reduce those emissions.

The University of Cincinnati and partner organizations described the technical foundation and next steps. Amanda Webb, associate professor of architectural engineering at the University of Cincinnati, said the project team has assembled an "unprecedented" dataset of building energy use for Cincinnati, produced estimates of retrofit capital costs, selected data-management…