Mayor Lee signs ordinance requiring energy benchmarking and audits for large commercial buildings

Mayor Edwin Lee signed the Existing Commercial Building Energy Performance Ordinance on the Board of Supervisors chamber floor, directing commercial buildings larger than 10,000 square feet to benchmark energy use annually and complete energy-efficiency audits over a three-year period.

The ordinance, developed with a task force that included building owners, managers, architects and financiers, requires owners to benchmark annual energy usage through the EPA’s free online application and to perform audits that identify cost-effective efficiency upgrades. The Department of the Environment’s Energy Watch program may provide incentives to get recommended work completed.

The measure “assures that our new construction has the highest level of environmental performance, but it didn't do anything about existing commercial buildings,” Mayor Lee said, noting the city’s larger potential energy savings come from retrofitting existing stock. “This ordinance was crafted with the support of the building industry to make sure it was doable and deliverable,” Lee added.

Board of Supervisors President David Chu said the ordinance enjoyed unanimous support in the supervisors’ chamber and called it a step toward making San Francisco “one of the top green cities in the world.” “When buildings do energy audits, when they figure out where they can save, they're able to reduce their overhead and use those monies in other ways to turbocharge their growth,” Chu said.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, a cosponsor, praised the collaborative process between city officials and the business community and said he was optimistic the measure would spur further cooperative policy-making.

Industry and task-force representatives who helped craft the ordinance were on hand. Stephen Ring of Cushman & Wakefield, who chaired the task force, said the ordinance represented successful public-private collaboration. Ken Cleveland of BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) said BOMA had worked with city staff to ensure the program “fits” the commercial market and expected “significant” energy reductions across the city.

The ordinance requires: annual benchmarking for covered commercial buildings, use of EPA’s benchmarking tools, and completion of energy-efficiency audits within three years; owners may then access incentives through the Department of the Environment’s Energy Watch program. The ordinance’s threshold and three-year audit timeline were adopted after negotiations with the task force and supervisors.

City officials said commercial buildings account for roughly half of the city’s energy use, giving the ordinance a sizable potential impact on greenhouse-gas emissions and operating costs. The signing follows unanimous Board support and the mayor’s presentation of the task force’s recommendations.

The mayor and city agencies said staff will publish compliance guidance and outreach materials for building owners and managers. The Department of the Environment and task-force members said they will continue to engage building owners on timelines and available incentives.