The Colorado Energy Office's Local IMPACT Accelerator has closed both application rounds, awarding a combined $51.7 million to local governments across the state. Funding comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program and covers four policy categories: buildings, land use, transportation, and waste. Building-related projects are required to exceed the Colorado Model Low Energy and Carbon Code (MLECC), which the state published in September 2025 and which became Colorado's statewide minimum energy code on July 1, 2026.
Six awardees account for roughly $16.1 million of that total and share a common thread: local building codes and performance standards written to be stricter than whatever the state eventually requires.
A Ten-Jurisdiction Cohort Is Writing One Code for All of Them
The largest single award, $4,024,750, went to a ten-jurisdiction cohort led by the City of Aspen. The group is developing shared advanced building energy codes requiring or incentivizing new construction to be all-electric and renewably powered, with funding split between code development, regional workforce training, and incentives aimed at affordable housing and low-income residents. Fort Collins received $3,838,615 to adopt a Building Performance Standards policy alongside a separate street-safety initiative, with part of the funding earmarked for technical assistance to help under-resourced building owners comply.
Smaller mountain towns picked up the rest. Telluride's $2,196,250 award funds new building energy performance standards for commercial and town-owned properties, aimed at buildings, which the town identifies as its single largest source of emissions. Ridgway is using $1,334,800 to adopt an all-electric code for new construction. Steamboat Springs, at $2,705,000, is pairing ADU-supportive zoning with geothermal system design work and decarbonization upgrades at city facilities.
Local Governments Still Have Room to Go Further
That last detail matters for anyone tracking these codes from outside Colorado. Because the grants require participating jurisdictions to exceed the statewide MLECC baseline rather than simply match it, each community retains real discretion over how much further it goes and which mechanism it uses to get there, whether that means an all-electric mandate, a performance standard, or incentive-based construction requirements. Building owners and developers operating across multiple Colorado jurisdictions should expect meaningful variation between what Aspen's cohort adopts, what Fort Collins adopts, and the statewide MLECC floor beneath both of them.
