Former Associate Technical Director, Building Energy Performance Policy

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Creating Alignment between Cities and Utility Energy Efficiency Programs

Cities are increasingly acting as market catalysts to encourage and require building owners to improve energy performance. However, cities implementing building performance policies that require actions like audits or re-tuning may experience conflicts with their regulated utilities’ efficiency programs, which depend on energy savings being additional—not attributable to market adoption or preexisting laws. These utility … Continued

Top Takeaways for Other Cities from Seattle’s New Benchmarking Report

Last week, the City of Seattle released a new summary report highlighting the results of its citywide building benchmarking and transparency program for 2014 to 2016, and the findings are encouraging. For example, consider these two highlights: Compliance is high. In 2016, the last year covered by the new report, 3,352 buildings reported, representing over … Continued

Taking Data to the Next Level: Assessing the Impacts of City Benchmarking Policies

This blog is the fifth in an ongoing series exploring the findings of IMT’s Putting Data to Work project, a three-year effort to explore how cities and their efficiency partners can better deploy building performance data to drive action on energy efficiency in buildings in their jurisdictions. For more information, visit imt.org/PuttingDatatoWork. In this blog, we … Continued

Putting Data to Work: Impact Assessment to Estimate the Savings from Energy Efficiency Programs

A Guide for City Governments to Estimate the Savings from Energy Benchmarking and Energy Efficiency Programs Mandatory programs that require benchmarking of building performance—wherein building owners track their building’s energy and/or water use and report the results to local government departments—have become one of the common tools for policymakers striving to reduce energy use within … Continued

Overview of Utility Engagement Issues

This report was produced by IMT for the Pacific Coast Collaborative, which sets a cooperative direction in key policy areas of mutual interest among North America’s West Coast jurisdictions including California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Linking Building Energy Codes With Benchmarking and Disclosure Policies

Building energy efficiency is widely recognized as the most cost-effective way to reduce reliance on non-renewable fuel sources and avoid the costly development of more power plants. Two key policy mechanisms available to assist with reducing building energy consumption are energy codes and benchmarking and disclosure policies. While building energy codes have been around since … Continued