Building Performance Standards (BPS), a policy type that establishes specific energy and/or greenhouse gas targets that large existing buildings are required to meet, are growing in popularity amongst local and state jurisdictions as a decarbonization tool. Concurrently, awareness is also increasing of the need to ensure that energy policies are addressing community priorities and uplifting issues such as health and affordability in parallel with greenhouse gas reductions.
Because BPS policies will result in widespread upgrades to appliances and systems that affect indoor air quality, ventilation, and thermal comfort, there are opportunities to integrate building health considerations into building performance standards. However, no existing BPS includes metrics or parameters that center health outcomes. This project examines this opportunity.
In this project, three national nonprofits convened a Community Advisory Committee consisting of Chicago and Los Angeles community-based organizations and national healthy building nonprofits to solicit community priorities related to health in building decarbonization. Our goals were to: 1) develop policy solutions to increase the cross-cutting impacts of a BPS as it relates to health outcomes; 2) address unintended consequences related to health and affordability; and 3) evaluate companion policies to better address health and affordability inequities. These findings are broadly applicable; however they are also specific to the communities who participated and each community will have locally specific priorities. This document can serve as a starting point for both governments and advocates to craft decarbonization policies that center community priorities, and for insights on how to collaborate across sectors and interest groups.
