Washington is leading the nation with existing building performance standards. The legislature recognizes that building decarbonization is necessary to achieve the state’s climate goals. Thus, expanding the state’s building performance standard to include decarbonizing district energy systems in House Bill (HB) 1390.
Compliance requirements
Normative Annex W of the Clean Buildings Performance Standard provides the general compliance rules of developing a decarbonization plan and reporting requirements for participating campus district energy systems. Decarbonization plans are mandatory for state campus district energy system and optional for campus district energy system.
A state campus district energy system is a district energy system that provides heating, cooling, or heating and cooling to a campus through a distributed system providing steam, hot water, or cool water to five (5) or more buildings with more than 100,000 square feet of combined conditioned space, where the system and all buildings connected to the system are owned by:
- The state of Washington; or
- A public-private partnership including one public buildings owner and one private entity.
A campus district energy system is a district energy system that provides heating, cooling, or heating and cooling to a campus through a distributed system providing steam, hot water, or cool water to three (3) or more buildings with more than 100,000 square feet of combined conditioned space, where the system and all buildings connected to the system are owned by:
- A single entity;
- A public-private partnership in which a private entity owns the systems providing heating, cooling, or heating and cooling to buildings owned by one public entity; or
- Two private entities in which one private entity owns the buildings connected to the system and another private entity owns the system providing heating, cooling, or heating and cooling to the buildings.
To opt-in, register your buildings connected to a district energy system by completing the District Energy System Registration and Opt-in Form.
- June 30, 2024 (no later than June 30, 2025)
- Begin developing a decarbonization plan.
- Notify Commerce of your participation by registering your buildings connected to a district energy system using the District Energy System Registration and Opt-in Form.
- June 30, 2025
- Submit a final decarbonization plan to Commerce.
- To avoid penalty, all decarbonization plans shall be approved prior to CBPS compliance date in accordance with Section Z3.2 or Y3.2.
- June or July 1, 2026, 2027, 2028
- Submit Energy Management Plan (EMP) and Operations and Maintenance Program (O&M) in accordance with compliance schedule in Section Z3.2 for Tier 1 covered buildings and Section Y3.2 for Tier 2 covered buildings.
- July 1, 2030
- Submit Energy Management Plan (EMP) and Operations and Maintenance Program (O&M) for buildings not covered, connected to the district energy system.
- Every five years after June 30, 2025
- Submit decarbonization plan progress report.
- July 1, 2040 or approved completion date
- Submit decarbonization plan completion report. This includes compliance with the energy use intensity target (EUIt) or the investment criteria of the standard.
Part 1- Detailed review of the requirements, compliance timeline, benchmarking, and developing an EUIt
Part 2- Decarbonization plan content outline, compliance forms, and resources
- International District Energy Association: Best practices, case studies, connect with experts, events
- DOE’s Better Climate Challenge: Offers opportunities for peer exchange and technical assistance
- Commerce’s District Energy Systems Registration
- Past rulemaking materials and recordings (on Box)
- WAC 194-50: Washington State Department of Commerce Adoption and Amendment Of ASHRAE Standard 100, 2018
- Stanford: Building Decarbonization Learning Accelerator
- RCW 27A.260: Campus energy system decarbonization plan
Office hours
A dedicated space outside of our scheduled trainings and workshops to connect with our Clean Buildings staff, ask questions, talk through scenarios and more. “Office Hours” are held on the 4th Tuesday of every month from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. PT.