The real estate industry has been at the forefront of climate policy at the local level for many years. As a leading source of carbon emissions for many cities and states, energy benchmarking laws were early tools used to inform policy decisions. Today REITs are navigating a regulatory landscape that requires benchmarking and transparency, audits, tune-ups, and retro commissioning, as well as meeting building performance standards.
This pressure is continuing to increase with four new jurisdictions adding existing building performance policies since January, bringing the national total to more than 50 jurisdictions with some form of a building performance policy. The Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) Building Performance Policy Center provides resources in the form of maps and matrices that summarize which cities, counties, and states have adopted various policies for existing buildings in a wide range of buildings over time.
These resources support building owners to remain aware of local policy deadlines. Key upcoming deadlines, with compliance assessed based on performance in the calendar year, include:
- 2024: Denver, New York, St. Louis
- 2025: Boston
- 2026: Washington, D.C.; Washington
Meanwhile, several jurisdictions have their first annual benchmarking reporting deadlines in 2023, including:
- June 1: Indianapolis
- June 30: Miami
- Oct. 1: New Jersey
To support building owners to meet these growing requirements, the EPA has created an interactive map to find utilities that provide energy data for benchmarking. Because many building owners lack access to whole-building energy use data, some utilities provide aggregated whole-building data, which sums up all owner and tenant consumption and delivers it to the building owners as a single value. EPA, along with IMT and other building owner associations, are seeking to raise awareness with state policymakers and utilities about this key challenge for building owners seeking to manage energy use and carbon emissions.
Nareit will continue to partner with other real estate trade associations to engage with organizations that are supporting building owners as they respond to growing requests from investors, regulators, and other key stakeholders on energy and carbon-related performance and risk.