Across the United States, entities at the state and local levels are implementing policies to control carbon emissions in their communities. Twenty-four states have adopted climate action plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to the Center for Energy Solutions.
To hit those targets, states need to focus on buildings, which contribute nearly one-third of all GHG emissions in the U.S.—and more than two-thirds in some urban areas. Local emission laws have emerged as powerful tools to drive innovation and provide a crucial framework to guide cities, states, and nations toward decarbonization.
A new sustainability standard
Many states and cities have enacted building performance standards (BPS) to ensure new construction and existing buildings meet emission caps. The regulatory landscape in each city is unique: some, like Boston and New York, have ambitious targets while other areas have no regulations at all.
Boston’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), a city-wide law, aims to reduce air pollution and GHG emissions from buildings larger than 20,000 square feet. Building owners are required to report annual energy and water consumption and must comply with emission standards that will tighten progressively, starting in 2025, to reach net-zero emissions for all Boston buildings by 2050.
New York City’s Local Law 97 targets buildings larger than 25,000 square feet, setting ambitious carbon emission reduction benchmarks of 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
Regulations, urgency levels, and non-compliance fines vary and include emission caps and net-zero goals. Thirteen U.S. cities have BPS, increasing to 40 cities by 2026. Regardless of whether your city has enacted and enforced emission reduction policies, they’re likely coming your way.
The Impact of Local Emission Laws
Regulations like BERDO and LL97 add accountability on carbon emissions and pressure building owners to cut consumption. To comply, many building owners need to rethink their operational strategies—no easy task, especially in areas where emission laws take effect very soon.
Meeting compliance may seem overwhelming, but it’s important for building owners to know they can typically reach emission caps without compromising profitability or productivity. Over time, decarbonization practices can improve both.
By applying available technologies, building owners can reduce operational carbon emissions by up to 42%, leading to smoother operations and achieving payback times of less than three years. To reach this return on investment on a new energy strategy, though, it’s crucial to collaborate with expert partners to help identify and integrate existing technologies while adding digital practices.
A typical building wastes 30% of its energy. Expert partners can help owners get a better understanding of their energy consumption and make adjustments. Digitization can help building owners and managers pinpoint energy losses and rectify the problem quickly, saving money, enhancing energy efficiency, and making progress toward meeting local emission limits.
Collaborative partnerships between industry experts and building owners demonstrate the potential of local emission regulations to drive innovations and encourage stakeholders to explore ways to minimize their carbon footprint.
Decarbonization Driven by Digitalization
As building owners navigate these regulations, they can explore a new landscape of high-tech solutions and sustainable operational methods. Updating facilities to emit less carbon drives innovation—encouraging developers and stakeholders to use technology in more efficient ways.
Many new builds are designed with emission caps and sustainability in mind. Boston University recently partnered with Schneider Electric to develop a 345,000-square-foot carbon-neutral building with 31 geothermic wells for heating and cooling, using electricity sourced from a wind farm in South Dakota. Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Building platform, a smart management solution, connects hardware, software, and services to monitor and control energy usage throughout the facility.
One of the greatest reduction opportunities lies in existing building stock, 50% of which will still be in use in 2050. Retrofitting is almost always less carbon-intensive than new construction on a lifecycle emissions basis due to the lower embodied carbon. A successful retrofit requires a technology-first approach, relying on modern digital and power-management solutions that are both effective and economical.
Schneider Electric recommends a three-step retrofit roadmap to help building owners achieve their energy saving goals: strategize, digitize, and decarbonize. Schneider’s practical service delivery and technology solutions can help organizations implement this roadmap and transform their buildings into energy-efficient spaces with new valuable insights into their energy consumption.
Reshaping Buildings of the Future
Today’s regulatory landscape ensures that energy efficiency is no longer optional but critical to a building’s operational strategy. As building owners embrace this approach, they can achieve a strategic competitive advantage by integrating improved building performance, user satisfaction, and long-term sustainability into business strategy.
Local emission laws represent more than just community-level initiatives. They also contribute to a global movement toward embracing decarbonization and innovative energy management—making sustainability the new standard.
As building standards evolve, the industrial sector will establish decarbonization practices as the new standard, leading to more sustainable buildings in terms of cost, longevity, and carbon-footprint.
Learn more about how to reduce building energy use by partnering with Schneider Electric.
