City Council Advances Energy Benchmarking

CHICAGO—The city council’s Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards voted yesterday to send Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s energy use benchmarking ordinance on to the full council, which will probably take a final vote today. The ordinance met opposition from some in the real estate community including BOMA/Chicago, which wanted the city to drop a provision that will allow the public disclosure of buildings’ energy efficiency scores. The Chicago Association of REALTORS® took a sterner line, and asked the committee to defer voting on the ordinance, proposed by the mayor on June 26, and instead design a more limited, and voluntary, neighborhood-based pilot program.

“We came up with what we thought was a reasonable solution,” said Brian A. Bernardoni, the association’s senior director of governmental affairs and public policy. The realtors fear the proposed program, which will require municipal, commercial and residential properties with more than 50,000-square-feet to track and publicly report their energy usage, will eventually impose costly mandates on building and condo owners. In his testimony, Bernardoni said he worried that the energy use ordinance would follow the path of a mid-nineties era ordinance that concerned building façades. “That ordinance; as some of you may recall, had to be redone several times; with different processes for the owners to comply with and tenants to pay for. Creating green buildings should not create red ink.”