In the second week of May, more 800 letters to property owners and managers of non-residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet in the City of Seattle will be sent by the Department of Planning and Development. This will kick-off the first phase of Seattle’s energy performance disclosure requirement. Property owners (or their agents) are required to enter these affected facilities into the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager program and share that facility’s statement of energy performance with the City of Seattle by October 3, 2011. Seattle is sharing national leadership on energy performance disclosure with a small handful of other metropolitan areas requiring buildings to perform an energy benchmark, make that information available to prospective and current tenants and prospective lenders and buyers. Additionally, owners must annually report those benchmarks to the City’s DPD. (Phase 2 of this project extends the requirement to non residential buildings greater than 10,000 square feet and multi-family properties with 5 units or more.) Watch the NEEC Blog page for a DPD post in early May with more details about the rollout of Phase 1.