Fiscal Note
Requirements will be met with existing staff resources. No appropriation is required.
Title
SUBSTITUTE Creating Section 29.047 of the Madison General Ordinances to create an energy benchmarking requirements for certain types of buildings in the City of Madison and amending Sections 1.08(3)(a) and (4) to establish a bail deposit for violation of this requirement that is enforceable by the City Engineer.
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DRAFTER'S ANALYSIS: Benchmarking is a well-established practice that measures a building's energy efficiency, water efficiency, and carbon emissions, and compares the building's performance against similar buildings in the region, thereby helping the building's owners become aware of the building's performance. Once aware of the building's energy and water consumption in comparison to other similar buildings, building owners may find that it is advantageous to make energy efficiency improvements to the building to save energy costs, increase the value of the property, and make the building more marketable. In addition, these changes made by private property owners will help the City meet its climate change and energy independence goals. Cities that have enacted a benchmarking requirement include New York, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. In addition, many states, including Wisconsin, have benchmarking requirements for state-owned buildings.
This ordinance creates a benchmarking requirement for City-owned buildings over 15,000 square feet, commercial buildings greater than 25,000 square feet and residential rental properties containing 35 or more dwelling units. Property owners of covered buildings must enter their building's data into a designated free national benchmarking tool and submit this information to the City, where this information will be compiled so that it can be used to generate energy use statistics for covered properties in the City. Benchmarking requirements will be phased in over a four-year period beginning with City-owned properties in 2014 and covered buildings in 2016. The public disclosure of benchmarking information from covered buildings will begin the second year benchmarking is required for the building, or 2017 for Class 1 covered buildings. This delayed disclosure will give property owners time to review the initial benchmarking information and make energy efficiency improvements before the data is compiled and made available to the public (except for data requested pursuant to a valid open records request). Ten percent of all annual submissions shall be verified by the City. Tenants shall be required to provide property owners with relevant information to allow them to benchmark their property. Finally, the failure to comply with these provisions would be subject to the issuance of a citation, enforceable by the City Engineering Division.
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The Common Council of the City of Madison do hereby ordain as follows:
Please see "SUBSTITUTE BODY" in Attachments.