Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment (OSE) has proposed two amendments to its energy disclosure ordinance. The first amendment provides for full public transparency of the benchmark results. Heretofore, this information was available on request during certain market transactions, but will under this amendment become fully public to all on an annual basis. This move, if adopted, would have Seattle join about dozen other major cities across the United States in providing full transparency of this information. A second amendment actually vaults Seattle to the front of the line nationally by requiring non-residential building owners of buildings greater than 50,000 square feet to perform building tune ups every five years. The requirement would phase in by building size over a three year roll out beginning in 2017. NEEC is strongly supportive of both of these amendments. In both cases, these actions strengthen the City’s commitment to improving the efficiency of its building stock and provide some not-so-subtle encouragement to owners to take advantage of the high yield return on investment from energy improvements in their buildings.
These amendments were considered and passed by the City Council Energy & Environment Committee on Thursday, February 25th and next head to the full Council for approval.