The White House Partners with 30+ State and Local Governments to Support Building Performance
President Biden forms national coalition focused on advancing more energy efficient, healthy buildings.
On Friday, January 21, President Biden announced the launch of the National Building Performance Standards Coalition which establishes a partnership between 33 state and local governments committed to advancing cleaner, healthier, more affordable energy efficient buildings nationwide by supporting building performance standard policies.
Over the past 15 years, state and local governments have utilized energy performance policies as way to address energy use in existing commercial buildings. These building performance standard (BPS) policies have traditionally focused on energy performance to help cities and states meet their respective climate goals.
This new White House initiative seeks to bring a renewed commitment to both the design and deployment of building performance policies at the state and local level, focusing on implementation strategies that can help these communities not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also help keep residents and workers safer from harmful air pollutants. State and local government participants will develop policy roadmaps, convene place-based teams to co-create policy and identify and act on pre-requisites for building performance standards and complementary policies. Through the coalition, partners will also share results and experiences to forge a community of practice – with the ultimate goal of advancing legislation or regulation in each of the represented jurisdictions by Earth Day 2024.
IWBI and the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) have led important work to enhance BPS policies, recently collaborating on a key resource designed to help cities strengthen how they approach BPS to better address and integrate strategies to improve indoor air quality. Again, to date, building performance policies have almost exclusively focused on energy and carbon. But our new resource, “The Building Performance Standard Module: Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality,” paved new ground by helping provide guidance for policymakers about how they can include parameters around ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ). Ultimately, the guide provides an actionable path for jurisdictions to bolster their BPS by including ventilation system performance and IAQ for buildings within their borders.
The launch of this intergovernmental coalition also follows President Biden’s May 2021 announcement to support new programs that help grow and train the buildings sector workforce and to increase retrofit uptake through a building performance standard for the federal building portfolio.
IWBI continues to work with IMT to promote enhancing BPS policies to support health and well-being.
