Everything You Need To Know About Washington D.C.’s BEPS
Key Takeaways
Failure to meet minimum energy performance standards will put a building into a 5-year improvement cycle.
Steep fines face owners who refuse to comply or upgrade.
BEPS will be ratcheted up so compliance is only temporary.
As part of the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018, the District of Columbia created Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS). BEPS requires various property types to meet minimum energy performance metrics to help meet the goals of the metro’s climate mitigation plan. Called Sustainable DC, the plan aims to lower the District’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. Starting in 2021, BEPS will establish a minimum standard for the next six years. Every six years and starting in 2027, the Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE) will revisit the standards, basing the potentially revised standards around benchmarking that’s been required of the District's largest buildings for several years. DOEE aggregates benchmarking reported to Energy Star for different building types to set performance standards per property type. Failure to meet standards will force an asset into a five-year compliance cycle.
Who’s Affected
The first six-year BEPS cycle, known as BEPS 1, covered all privately owned buildings larger than 50,000 square feet and all city-owned buildings larger than 10,000 square feet. Owners of impacted buildings have been benchmarking their assets since 2013. In 2027, BEPS 2 will begin applying to all privately-owned buildings over 25,000 square feet, which began benchmarking in 2021. BEPS 3, starting in 2033, lowers the requirements for any private building over 10,000 square feet.
What’s Required
Depending on the property type, buildings must meet a minimum Energy Star Score:
Office Building 71
Hotels 54
Multifamily 66
K-12 Schools 36
Hospitals 50
If your building already meets BEPS 1 standards, nothing is required but to keep benchmarking the asset in a timely fashion. If the asset does not meet standards, it will be put into a five-year compliance cycle followed by a ‘gap year’ that allows DOEE to review benchmarking data. Owners in a compliance cycle must execute one of four different ‘compliance pathways.’
Owners have one year to select a pathway.
Performance pathway: Demonstrate a 20% reduction in energy use intensity.
Standard target pathway: Only available to buildings that are at least as efficient as the national median, owners must show the asset meets BEPS standards for the property type by the last year of the cycle (2026).
Prescriptive pathway: Owners must conduct an energy audit, create a list of energy efficiency upgrades for implementation, generate an implementation report that includes permitting, inspections, and documentation regarding the installation of the selected measures, and agree to monitoring and verification of corrective actions and energy savings.
Alternative pathway: A unique plan proposed by the owner approved at DOEE’s discretion that achieves comparable energy savings.
Enforcement/Penalties
Failure to comply by the end cycle could result in a maximum fine of $10 per square foot, not to exceed $7,500,000 per building. Fines will be proportional to the building’s demonstrated performance, meaning the closer to BEPS standards an asset is, the lower any potential fines. The further away, the higher the fine. Withholding information, reporting inaccurate information, failing to submit benchmarking, and implementing a measure detrimental to occupant health and safety may result in the maximum fine. Additional fines for violating reporting requirements or missing pathway deadlines may also be levied.
Insight
Between benchmarking laws and performance standards, property owners in the District of Columbia are left with few options. Spend serious capital on building upgrades or face serious fines that could end up costing millions of dollars anyway. The good news is DC has given owners plenty of time to adapt to the new rules. Owners that already took benchmarking efforts seriously will likely find their assets well positioned to meet BEPS. Purpose-built for energy use intensity reduction with benchmarking and compliance plug-ins, Nantum OS is one of the most powerful tools DC owners can leverage to avoid BEPS headaches.
