Montgomery County committee backs amended building energy rules and unveils $68.5 million for implementation

The Montgomery County Transportation and Environment Committee voted unanimously on Jan. 30 to back amended building energy performance regulations and send the package (executive regulation 17-23 AM) on to the full council for further consideration.

Emily Curley, Building Energy Performance Program Manager at the Department of Environmental Protection, summarized the changes, saying, "So what this means is that any individual building's final performance standard is not gonna require a greater than 30% reduction from that building's baseline," a new "30% performance cap" the county added to provide an additional compliance option for buildings far from their targets.

Why it matters: the BEPS law, passed in April 2022, covers most Montgomery County buildings 25,000 square feet and larger (Curley said about 1,800 buildings, roughly 250,000,000 gross square feet). DEP told the committee that benchmarking reporting rates are high (about 95% last year) and that the amended regulations use updated 2023 benchmarking data to refine final standards for certain property types,…