In this episode of the REIT Report special series “Building to Zero,” Duane Desiderio, senior vice president at the Real Estate Roundtable (RER) shares a recently released 20-point policy guide which outlines lessons learned from the building owner perspective over the past seven years since the first building performance standard was implemented in 2017. 

Since Local Law 97 was passed by the City Council in New York City as part of the Climate Mobilization Act in April 2019, commercial building owners in the United States have experienced the rise in regulations know as Building Performance Standards (BPS), which are intended to regulate the use of energy in existing buildings. Buildings owners are currently navigating a patchwork of law with various rules, processes, and compliance pathways in cities and states across the county.

“A good way to start the conversation is by drawing a bit of a contrast to the climate and energy policies on buildings that we've seen come from the federal level, where the emphasis has been on carrots not sticks, incentives to encourage buildings to push the envelope to reduce emissions to become more efficient. At the state and local level unlike the federal level, these BEPS laws would impose mandatory limits on buildings to either reduce their energy by certain amounts every year or to reduce their carbon emissions every year or in some cases both.”