The Clean Buildings Performance Standard, which is not a benchmarking programme.
Washington asks for an energy management plan, an operations and maintenance programme, and a performance target. Benchmarking is the ruler, not the grade.
Dates and thresholds change. We confirm the current requirement for your specific building before anyone acts on it.
What the standard actually asks of a building.
Washington is an absolute-target state. Commerce publishes target energy use intensity by building type in advance, which means a building can owe a performance standard having never benchmarked in its life. Benchmarking is how you measure against the target, not the obligation itself.
There are four compliance pathways rather than two: meet the target, satisfy the investment criteria, achieve a 15 percent reduction, or electrify with heat pumps. Choosing well requires modelling all four rather than defaulting to the obvious one.
Two structural details matter more than anything else here. The test is a single building rather than the aggregate of a campus, with parking excluded, so center and campus totals over-tier every time. And there is a band inversion: a building just under 50,000 sq ft is due eleven months earlier than one just over it.
How we get you to the standard
Establish the position, choose the route, then document the work.
Notice-driven penalties, and an extension window most owners do not know exists.
Commerce cites five thousand dollars plus a per-square-foot amount, and enforcement is notice-driven rather than automatic. Before quoting exposure to anyone, we check the extension position.
Extensions can be filed up to six months after a missed deadline and are valid for two years, which is unusual and genuinely useful. Always check that window before assuming a building is in trouble.
What a Commerce letter usually means.
Washington publishes no covered building list, so the letter is how you learn you are covered.
Send us the letterSend us the letter itself, not a summary. We read it for the six things that decide the response: who sent it, which building and identifier it names, what period it covers, what it says you failed to do, the cure date, and whether it is a first notice or an escalation. We never quote a running penalty total, and we cure first, then talk to the regulator.
Why boards bring us in
Performance standards are where the money is, and where bad advice is most expensive.
Questions about the Clean Buildings Performance Standard
Keep reading
The pages that usually matter next for a Washington building.
Know your position before the next deadline.
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