Owners and operators of Denver commercial and multifamily buildings have until Sept. 2 to file 2016 energy benchmarking reports, or face a $2,000 fine.
The requirement is part of a city ordinance adopted late last year that requires commercial and multi-family buildings with more than a 25,000-square-foot footprint to track and publicly report their annual energy performance. This is just one aspect of Denver’s 2020 Sustainability Goals, which focuses on 12 resource areas: air quality, climate change, energy, food, health, housing, land use, materials, mobility, water quantity and quality, and workforce.
“There are approximately 2,400 buildings over 50,000 square feet that need to comply this first year,” said Katrina Managan, senior advisor of energy efficiency for the Department of Environmental Health, in an interview on deverite.com. “Investing an estimated $340 million in improving building energy efficiency could result in 4,000 local jobs and $1.3 billion in energy savings over 10 years.”
The city is planning to publish building energy performance data annually.
Colorado has committed to meeting or exceeding greenhouse gas reduction targets set in the international Paris climate treaty that President Donald Trump rejects. It was reported today that Colorado has signed on to the U.S Climate Alliance, a collection of states and companies countering the Trump administration by shifting more quickly to wind and solar energy.