St. Louis Adopts Midwest’s First Building Performance Standard
Date Posted: June 11, 2020
Posted In: News, Organizations,
From Greentech Media: With climate action stalled at the federal level in the United States, local and state governments across the country are filling the leadership void. And the emerging leaders aren’t just the big cities or blue-leaning states on the East and West Coasts.
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson recently signed a law establishing a mandatory Building Energy Performance Standard in the city, which is the second-largest in Missouri. The new standard is the first building performance standard in the Midwest and just the fourth of its kind nationwide, following the adoption of similar standards in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Washington state.
Buildings are responsible for nearly 80 percent of St. Louis’ greenhouse gas emissions. The city will not achieve its goal of a 100 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 without aggressive action to decarbonize buildings.
The new standard applies to municipal, commercial, institutional and multifamily residential buildings 50,000 square feet and larger, which covers roughly 1,000 buildings in the city. The performance metric codified in the standard is energy use intensity — a site’s energy use divided by its gross floor area — as calculated by Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager online tool.
The new standard applies to municipal, commercial, institutional and multifamily residential buildings 50,000 square feet and larger, which covers roughly 1,000 buildings in the city. The performance metric codified in the standard is energy use intensity — a site’s energy use divided by its gross floor area — as calculated by Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager online tool.
Performance standards must be set for each building type by May 4, 2021, with the first compliance deadline coming in May 2025. The standard will be set to ensure that 65 percent of the buildings in each property type will have to save energy to comply with the law. The standards will be reviewed and updated every four years.
“We strongly believe that a [Building Energy Performance Standard] policy will provide significant impact in driving down our overall [greenhouse gas] emissions,” Rajiv Ravulapati, an analyst with the City of St. Louis Building Division, told Greentech Media in an email.
Building upon previous efficiency efforts in St. Louis
The new building performance standard is the latest in a series of moves to improve the energy efficiency of buildings in St. Louis.
The city launched a property-assessed clean energy financing program for commercial buildings in 2013. The program, which enables building owners to avoid the upfront costs to install energy-saving upgrades, with repayment tied to their property tax bill, was expanded to residential buildings in 2017.
In St. Louis, as was the case in New York City and Washington, D.C., benchmarking requirements predated a building performance standard. By requiring owners of large buildings to document and disclose performance metrics such as energy and water usage or greenhouse gas emissions each year, benchmarking laws make it possible to track performance over time, to identify underperforming buildings in a portfolio and to compare a building’s performance to its peers. St. Louis’ benchmarking law, which took effect in 2017, also applies to buildings 50,000 square feet and larger.