Policy

As a trusted, nonpartisan advisor for local, regional, state, and federal policymakers, IMT continuously facilitates collaboration between public and private sector stakeholders to drive demand for high-performance buildings that unleash a variety of environmental, economic, and social benefits for cities across the U.S. Interested in learning more IMT’s work with cities to drive market demand for efficiency and high-performance buildings? Check out our blogs and resources below.

The Latest

Setting Your City Up for Success at the Public Utilities Commission

This post is the third in a three-part series that helps local governments understand why working with utility regulators matters, what they can achieve, and how to set themselves up for success. Read part one here and part two here. In my last post, I talked about Montgomery County, Maryland, which engages at Maryland Public … Continued

Working with Utility Regulators: The Montgomery County Success Story

This post is the second in a three-part series that helps local governments understand why working with utility regulators matters, what they can achieve, and how to set themselves up for success. Read part one here and part three here. Cities across the U.S. are beginning to engage more directly with their energy utilities to achieve … 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

IMT at the Global Climate Action Summit

It’s an exciting week to be in the climate action space, and IMT is thrilled to take part in the international conversation. Recognizing the critical need for climate action, the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit is uniting international leaders and community members on deeper commitments and accelerated action. As states and regions, cities, businesses, and … 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

Sharing Data to Motivate Action

Sharing Data to Motivate Action is intended to help implementers of benchmarking and transparency policies understand the latest techniques for developing energy benchmarking scorecards, also called energy benchmarking profiles, which present energy data to building owners as actionable information to encourage investment in efficiency.

Managing Benchmarking Data Quality

Managing Benchmarking Data Quality was written to help  benchmarking policy implementers understand current best practices for managing data gathered from ordinances in states, counties, and cities across the U.S.

Analyzing Benchmarking Data

Analyzing Benchmarking Data provides useful knowledge on the annual benchmarking reports that many jurisdictions publish to summarize 12 months of reported energy and/or water utility data. It includes discussions of the types of analysis that jurisdictions with benchmarking laws have used to extract valuable information from the benchmarking data and gives examples of how some jurisdictions have calculated and displayed their analytical findings.