Within the past five years, two states and five major cities have passed building energy rating (or benchmarking) and disclosure policies that will affect some of the nation’s largest metropolitan real estate markets, including New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Seattle. The energy performance of several billion square feet of floor space in those markets and others must be benchmarked and disclosed to consumers over the next few years.
For local policy implementers, this is a large and complex task. Responding to the need for greater collaboration between jurisdictions, the Institute for Market Transformation convened the Roundtable on Implementing Benchmarking and Disclosure Policy in Nov. 2010, in Washington, DC. The event brought together senior policy implementers from 10 states and cities, national building energy efficiency experts, and leaders from the commercial real estate industry.
This report is an outcome of the Roundtable and ongoing collaboration with Roundtable participants. The central conclusion of this report is that best practices are rapidly emerging that can help policy implementers overcome barriers and effectively implement rating and disclosure policies. Many of these approaches have broad applicability both to current policy implementers and to jurisdictions that may implement rating and disclosure policies in the future.
