Green Building Law Blog : Green Building Lawyer & Attorney : Shari Shapiro: Calliope Communications, LLC

Last week, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon introduced S.B. 3079, the Building Star Bill, to:

To assist in the creation of new jobs by providing financial incentives for owners of commercial buildings and multifamily residential buildings to retrofit their buildings with energy efficient building equipment and materials and for other purposes.

In essence, Building Star provides rebates for retrofitting commercial and multifamily buildings in existence as of December 31, 2009 with energy efficient components, like insulation, window, doors, HVAC equipment, etc.  the rebates are structured as follows:

• For energy audits and commussioning studies--$.05 per square foot of audited or commissioned space or 50% of the cost of the audit or commissioning study.
• For energy efficient building operations and maintenance training--$2000 per individual trained and certified
• For service on space heating equipment--$100 per unit serviced
• For service on cooling systems--$2 per ton of namepate cpacity of the serviced cooling system and 50% of the total service cost
• For installation of qualified energy monitoring and management systems--the lesser of $.45 per square foot of building space covered by the system or 50% of total installation and commissioning costs
• For upgrades of qualified energy monitoring and management systems--the lesser of $.15 per square foot of building space covered by the system or 50% of total installation and commissioning costs
• For HVAC testing, balancing and duct sealing--$.75 per square foot of duct surface tested, balanced and if necessary, sealed

The Building Star incentives can be combined with other incentives, like the existing deductions for energy efficient buildings. 

The Building Star program also provides for a loan program administered by the states to provide loans for energy efficiency upgrades.

So the question becomes, will this incentive program be significant enough to cause building owners to invest in these energy efficiency measures. 

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On December 3, 2008, Portland unveiled its new suite of green building regulations based around a fee and rebate system.  My fellow green building laywer Chris Cheatham over at Green Building Law Update describes the "feebate" system:

Under the Feebate system, all new buildings built to code are assessed a fee.  If a project is built to LEED Silver, then the fee is waived and the owner obtains access to financing options.  Even better, if a project attains LEED Gold, the city writes the project owner a check! 
 

Although the Feebate system is a great idea, Oregon Live reports that not everyone was happy with the program, specifically the homebuilding industry, forcing Portland's mayor to exempt homes from the feebate program

New homes would not get the new fees or rebates. But the city would ask of the homebuilding industry: Meet a citywide goal of getting more new homes certified green each year, or else Portland would impose a fee-and-rebate system to make builders comply.

This is a pretty big compromise, and an interesting precedent for cities looking to emulate Portland's system.  For example, in Philadelphia, retrofitiing and building homes is a large component of the building stock.  If homes are exempted, what impact will that have on the overall efficacy of green building programs? 

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