POLICY AND ADVOCACY & STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

Green Building United approaches its policy and advocacy efforts and its strategic initiatives with an understanding that buildings are the primary driver of climate change in our region and by far the best opportunity to mitigate and to adapt to future climate impacts.

Throughout 2017, Green Building United has made tremendous strides to advance a sustainable, healthy, and resilient built environment through legislative victories and programmatic accomplishments.

Policy and Advocacy

Green Building United organizes its members and supporters around the highest-priority action steps to advance green building on the state and local levels through policy briefs and advocacy engagement opportunities.

Building Codes

As one of its Pennsylvania state legislative priorities, Green Building United focused in 2017 on proposed legislation to amend the commonwealth’s broken code adoption process. Pennsylvania is two cycles behind in its adoption of the International Codes, locking in outdated standards and practices that lead to increased utility costs for consumers, increased insurance costs for municipalities, and training difficulties for building inspectors.

Green Building United encouraged lawmakers to allow municipalities to adopt code standards more stringent than what is required by the Uniform Construction Code through legislative visits, calls, and letters to lawmakers. To highlight the often-invisible benefits of energy efficiency that our current code lacks, Green Building United also co-coordinated the icehouse demonstration project in Harrisburg in June. Two structures were built – one to current energy code standards and another to a Passive House-like standard – and filled with ice. The difference in the rate of ice melt illustrated an observable difference in performance between the two standards and helped support our call to increase the energy efficiency requirements in our base code.

This October, legislation to adopt modern building codes became law as Act 36 of 2017 and includes a one-time jump-ahead for the City of Philadelphia to adopt the 2018 International Codes for new commercial construction and major retrofits. This advancement represents a more than 30% increase in energy efficiency as compared to current code.

The rest of the commonwealth will reconsider 2015 International Codes through the Review and Advisory Council under this new adoption process. The adopted provisions from the re-review of 2015 International Codes and from the Philadelphia jump-ahead will take effect on October 1, 2018.

To ensure a smooth rollout, Green Building United will provide education and training for the design and construction communities on both the substance as well as the content of code changes that will occur over the next calendar year. The first education and training events will be held in January 2018.

Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) legislation has been introduced in both the Pennsylvania and Delaware General Assemblies for commercial and industrial properties.

Commercial PACE is a financing mechanism that enables low-cost, long-term funding for construction, renovation, or retrofitting of energy efficient technology or clean energy systems. Property owners pay the loans back through their annual property tax bill or other local tax assessments and there is no cost to state taxpayers. Commercial PACE programs help to encourage clean energy job growth, lower utility bills, increase building asset value, save energy, and reduce carbon emissions.

Senate Bill 234, which authorizes the creation of commercial PACE programs in Pennsylvania, passed unanimously out of the Senate Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee in October and is awaiting a full vote of the Senate. A companion bill has been introduced in the House and is in committee. Green Building United encourage lawmakers to pass this legislation during its June advocacy and has recommitted its support through calls and letters of support.

In November, Green Building United hosted an educational event in November to support Senate Bill 113, authorizing the creation of commercial PACE financing programs in Delaware. Business owners, students, elected officials and their staff attended the event to learn about the benefits of commercial PACE financing in Delaware. Green Building United has been invited to attend a Senate caucus committee in 2018 to continue educating elected officials on commercial PACE.

Closing Solar Borders in Pennsylvania

As part of its June advocacy day in Harrisburg, Green Building United encouraged lawmakers to support a requirement that all Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) purchased in fulfillment of the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS) Program originate in Pennsylvania. Language to close the borders to out-of-state solar credits passed in October as part of the Administrative Code, Act 40 of 2017.

This law reverses the devaluation of Pennsylvania solar, which has led to a dramatic loss of investment and jobs. Currently, AEPS allows any solar system located in the 13 states of the PJM Interconnection region to be eligible to receive Pennsylvania’s SRECs. This loophole has resulted in a massive oversupply of solar from other states registered in the Pennsylvania AEPS compliance program (79% out-of-state solar projects.)

Strategic Initiatives

Green Building United leads several strategic initiatives across our region that support the implementation of green building standards and practices.

Philadelphia 2030 District

Green Building United convenes the Philadelphia 2030 District, a voluntary, private-sector led effort by the owners, managers, and developers of the city’s largest properties to achieve deep reductions in energy use, water use, and transportation emissions. The initiative seeks to improve efficiency in the building sector in Philadelphia with the goal to lower costs, reduce carbon emissions, improve indoor air quality and tenant comfort, and improve the resiliency of the city’s new and existing building stock.

After a year of building local support for an emerging district, DVGBC launched the Philadelphia 2030 District in October 2017 with more than 16 million square feet of building space committed to meeting the reduction goals. To meet the goals of the district, DVGBC provides education, training, and peer networking opportunities around strategies to increase awareness and change behavior of building occupants, improved operations by building personnel, and strategic capital investments by building owners.

The first reporting deadline for the district is June 30, 2018 and data from year one will be shared at a public meeting in December 2018.

Green Schools

Green Building United works with schools throughout the State of Delaware to promote sustainable design, construction, and operation of existing schools with the goal of improving student health and performance, as well as training educators and students to be good environmental stewards. In its fourth year, the program will provide free facilities audits to 5 schools and will distribute $10,000 of mini grant funding to assist with participating schools’ sustainability efforts.

Highlights from this year included the program’s winners of the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools Award (Forwood Elementary School, Postlethwait Middle School) as well as recipients of the National Wildlife Federation’s Green Flag Award (Warner Elementary School and Forwood Elementary School.) Both are national honors awards to schools that have demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability on their campuses.

City Energy Project

Green Building United completed its work as the non-profit partner for the City Energy Project, a partnership with local government officials to improve building energy efficiency. Activities in Philadelphia built on increased awareness around energy consumption in buildings from energy benchmarking and disclosure laws.

In March and April, Green Building United provided half-day building operator trainings to operations and maintenance staff, building management, and offsite contractors. The course offerings teach participants how to operate buildings more efficiently to save energy and to reduce operating costs. Nearly 100 participants completed this training over the course of the City Energy Project partnership.

This November, Green Building United launched The Hub, a searchable database of energy efficiency and sustainability companies that provide services throughout Green Building United’s region. Whether users are interested in energy benchmarking assistance for a commercial building or a residential home energy audit, this directory connects users to the appropriate green providers to meet their project needs.