Building Decarbonization Measures

The bill updates energy use benchmarking and performance standard requirements for owners of certain buildings (covered building owners), including:

• A requirement to meet 2040 performance standards, as adopted by the air quality control commission (commission) , in consultation with the Colorado energy office (office) and in consideration of recommendations made by a task force convened by the office;
• Authorizing an alternative compliance mechanism for covered building owners to comply with certain performance standards; and
• Aligning Updating civil penalties owed for a violation of the benchmarking requirements to an amount up to $577 for a first violation and up to $2,300 for each subsequent violation and , on and after January 1, 2030, for a violation of the performance standard requirements with civil penalties owed for other air quality violations to an amount up to $2,300 for every 30 days that the covered building owner is in violation and up to $5,800 for every 30 days for a subsequent violation. The commission shall adopt rules to annually adjust the penalty amounts for inflation.

The bill also creates a building decarbonization enterprise (enterprise) to provide financial assistance, technical assistance, and other programmatic assistance to covered building owners to effectively and efficiently implement building decarbonization measures, including energy efficiency measures, electrification measures, energy upgrades, and participation in utility on-bill repayment programs. The enterprise is authorized to impose and collect from covered building owners an annual building decarbonization fee to cover the enterprise's costs in providing the financial, technical, and programmatic assistance.

The bill exempts clarifies that a local government that adopts is not required to adopt building codes from the requirement to adopt an energy code if the local government has solely as a result of having adopted an approved a wildfire resiliency code.

(Note: Italicized words indicate new material added to the original summary; dashes through words indicate deletions from the original summary.)

(Note: This summary applies to the reengrossed version of this bill as introduced in the second house.)