The District of Columbia’s Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) has issued the building energy performance standards that will apply to the first cycle of the city’s Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) Program, which was created under Title III of the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018 (CEDC Act). For the first BEPS cycle, private buildings over 50,000 square feet and city-owned buildings over 10,000 square feet must have an Energy Star score that is higher than the published median. For buildings that do not receive Energy Star scores, they must have source energy used that falls below the median.

The standards, some of which are shown in Table 1, are based on 2019 building energy benchmarking data. Compliance is determined by comparing a given building’s 2019 benchmarking performance to the values shown. Buildings that do not comply with the standard will have five years to comply. Read DC BEPS Proposed Rules – A First Read for more information. The full list of requirements is found in the document posted on the DC register’s website.

Compared to the 2018 Energy Star scores, the 2019 scores show an increasing trend from 2018 to 2019 in several cases including for office buildings and multi-family buildings. This is consistent with past trends and is expected to continue going forward.

The standards are issued under emergency rulemaking procedures and are open for comment until January 31, 2021. However, we do not expect there to be significant changes to the published medians.