Chicago Building Energy Disclosure Ordinance Passes

Read the full Ordinance here. See the full Chicago Tribune article from which the below text was excerpted.

As part of a city-wide initiative aimed at curbing energy usage in Chicago buildings, owners of large buildings will now be required to disclose how much energy their buildings use and how they measure up against their peers. The city council passed the measure in a 32-to-17 vote Wednesday.

While the city has not yet required that building owners take steps to improve energy efficiency, the city wants to cut energy use in half of Chicago buildings by 30 percent by 2020. But the law requires annual reports on energy efficiency of Chicago buildings starting next year.

Under the proposal, buildings in excess of 50,000 square feet -- which represent less than 1 percent of the city's buildings but 22 percent of buildings total energy consumption -- would be required to disclose energy consumption data and information about building size, use and occupancy levels into a software program like TurboTax administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The "benchmarking" tool, called Energy Star Portfolio Manager, would then compare the energy efficiency of comparable buildings. The city said they hope that the scores will motivate business owners to improve through upgrades. The EPA said energy use declined by 7 percent in the 35,000 buildings that used the tool to benchmark energy performance from 2008 to 2011.