AB 758 gives the Energy Commission the authority to develop regulations to achieve the legislative goals. This could include developing mandatory rating and labeling requirements and potentially include mandatory energy upgrades as a component of the program. For any mandatory program to be successful in achieving the objectives, there needs to be sufficient market infrastructure developed to support program implementation. The goal of the Energy Commission is to first establish and refine the appropriate tools and other supportive market
infrastructure and attempt to accomplish program objectives through voluntary approaches
before considering mandatory programs.
Residential and Commercial Energy Conservation Ordinances
Residential and commercial energy conservation ordinances are mandatory approaches that
require efficiency improvements to existing buildings. Usually focused around some trigger point, such as the sale of a home or the upgrade of meter infrastructure, these ordinances require a specific set of measures be installed on a property if not already present (capped at a certain level of investment per property). The city of San Francisco introduced the first
Residential Energy Conservation Ordinance, or RECO, in 1982. Since then, the city of Berkeley and the city of Austin, Texas, have followed suit, with Berkeley’s ordinance effective in 1987 and Austin enacting its ordinance in 2008.
In 1994, Berkeley expanded its RECO program to include commercial buildings, implementing the first commercial energy conservation ordinance. CECOs operate similarly to RECOs, requiring the property owner to bring the building up to compliance with a minimum level of investment at the time of sale or major renovation (defined as more than $50,000 or an increase in conditioned space.)
Energy Audit and Related Requirements
In December 2009, the city of New York adopted Local Law 2009/087 that requires existing buildings greater than50,000 square feet to obtain an energy audit and control system commissioning every 10 years (applies to residential and nonresidential properties). The requirements extend further for city buildings, stating “…reasonable capital improvements … that are recommended in the buildingʹs energy audit shall be completed, including, at a minimum, all those improvements … having a simple payback of not more than seven years
…”
In November 2008, the Austin, Texas, City Council approved the Energy Conservation Audit and Disclosure Ordinance (#20081106‐047). In addition to rating and disclosure requirements for nonresidential facilities and mandatory energy audits for homes and apartment complexes, some apartment complexes are also required to undergo energy retrofits. The Austin Energy Efficiency Retrofit Task Force crafted the ordinance with input from local real estate agents and other parties. ʺHigh energy‐useʺ properties consuming more than 150 percent of the average
multifamily energy use per square foot in Austin must make energy retrofits within 18 months to bring the property to within 110 percent of the average.
The City of San Francisco’s Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings Ordinance (described in Chapter 5) is another example of a mandatory audit requirement relating to nonresidential buildings, although the ordinance does not include any mandatory upgrade requirements.
Title 24, Part 6, Building Energy Efficiency Standards
While California’s Building Energy Efficiency Standards are not mandatory for existing
buildings, they do set the requirements that apply in the case of building additions, alterations, and some repairs. In determining the conditions that trigger Title 24 requirements (for example, t what alterations does it apply?), the Energy Commission can influence the extent of energy efficiency upgrades for existing buildings.
Market Needs
If California is to succeed in achieving its ambitious goals for existing buildings, it is important that all of the components of the market are well‐developed and that an appropriate “trigger” mechanism is used to put the process into motion. Program design should consider the availability of these components and ensure programs are designed to engage existing market capacity effectively, provide support in areas of weakness, and monitor to ensure quality as well as for evaluation purposes—all with as simple an approach as possible for the participants. Key needs to be considered include, but are not limited to:
• Incentives and financing that can make projects more attractive to the customer, and thus saleable by the contractor.
• Building ratings that encourage and reinforce a customer’s decision to upgrade the property and that provides the information to reach practitioners and decision makers. • Energy audits/assessments that are universally accepted and trusted to provide accurate
savings estimates.
• Highly qualified, trained, properly certified and capable contractor teams able to provide a compelling project experience to the building owner and occupants.
• Outreach and education programs that effectively stress building performance,
including important drivers such as: (1) reduced energy costs and impact; (2) rebate incentives; (3) non‐energy benefits such as health, safety, comfort, and indoor air quality; (4) local job creation; (5) recycling dollars within the local economy131; (6) national
security; (7) energy independence; and (8) greenhouse gas reduction.
131 Using The Allowance Value From California’s Carbon Trading System, Legal Risk Factors, Impacts to
Ratepayers and the Economy; Next 10; May 2012; from page 6: “…household efficiency measures are
more distributed and therefore more job intensive, and when households save money on energy, their
spending on alternative goods and services is about 16 times more job intensive than the energy fuel