Seattle Building Emissions Performance Standard Policy Background

The City of Seattle developed the new Building Emissions Performance Standard (BEPS) policy with input from hundreds of building owners, managers, tenants, labor representatives, affordable housing proponents, environmental justice groups, and others in 2022 and 2023 to maximize benefits to building owners and tenants and to ensure equitable pathways to high quality green jobs, especially for people of color and women.

Why Reduce Building Emissions

In Seattle, buildings are one of the largest sources of climate pollution, responsible for more than a third of our City's greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions pollute our air, accelerate climate change, harm people's health and the environment, and disproportionately impact communities of color and people with lower incomes. BEPS is a high impact solution to the climate crisis to create healthy and efficient buildings where we work and live.

Burning fossil fuels like gas and oil for heating, hot water, appliances, and cooking in Seattle's existing commercial and multifamily buildings accounts for over 90 percent of all building related greenhouse gas emissions (see dashboard). According to a recent study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, fossil fuel use in buildings is responsible for thousands of early deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of annual health impacts. Continuing to power our buildings with high emissions fossil fuels is an issue of climate justice as explained in this OSE infographic. 

Policy Background

Mayor Harrell directed the Office of Sustainability & Environment (OSE) to develop legislation for carbon-based performance standards for existing commercial and multifamily buildings greater than 20,000 square feet in 2022. 

The Mayor’s order to move forward with BEPS made good on multiple calls to develop the policy over the last several years, namely: 

•  The 2018 Climate Action Strategy, which called for a Seattle-specific building performance policy to reduce emissions by gradually transitioning nonresidential and multifamily buildings to use cleaner energy. It also called for Seattle to reach an almost 40% emissions reduction in the buildings sector by 2030 and to be net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  

• The 2019 City Council Green New Deal Resolution (Res 31895) , which called for a Seattle free of climate pollutants by 2030.  

• Executive Order 2021-09: Driving Accelerated Climate Action, which directed OSE to accelerate action toward net zero emission buildings, healthy and equitable transportation, and clean energy workforce development to advance climate justice. The order also established a city workgroup to report on potential options to lower upfront and operating costs to build, operate, and maintain affordable housing to address the climate crisis and improve resilience. 

To lead by example, the City of Seattle has reduced building related emissions 24% and energy 25% across the municipal portfolio from 2008 through 2021 and is developing a plan to transition all City-owned buildings to net-zero emissions.   

Seattle BEPS will complement the Washington State Clean Building Performance Standard and build on the City's existing Energy Benchmarking and Building Tune-Up programs. Although the State energy performance standards are an important start, OSE projects they will only result in about a 4% reduction by 2030 in meeting the City's 2050 carbon-neutral goal. In contrast, the BEPS greenhouse gas emissions standard for larger buildings could result in up to a 27% decrease across all building emissions by 2050 (see image below). 

In creating a building emissions performance standard that phases-in over many years, Seattle joined a growing cohort of other leading cities, including Boston, St. Louis, Washington DC, and New York City, that have worked with local building stakeholders and community members to establish energy and/or carbon emissions performance standards. Seattle also joined the  Building Performance Standards Coalition that was launched by President Biden, a group of dozens of state and local governments that committed to inclusively design and implement building performance policies and programs. It is a first-of-its-kind partnership designed to unlock energy efficiency and electrification across the buildings sector as an engine for job creation all while lowering energy bills. 

Policy Development Timeline (updated 01/05/24) 

• January–June 2022 — Stakeholder engagement, open houses, and affordable housing and technical advisory groups
• April 5, 2022 — 1st Online Open House: Seattle BPS concept and background presented 
• June 16, 2022 — 2nd Online Open House: Draft Seattle BPS framework presented 
• Oct. 25, 2022 — Webinar: Draft emissions targets and analysis
• March 23, 2023 — Webinar: Policy update and estimating draft emissions targets 
• June 2022–May 2023 — Continued stakeholder engagement and policy updates
• May 2023 — Proposed legislation delivered to Mayor's Office
• June 8, 2023 — News Release: Mayor Harrell introduces BEPS
• June 8–29, 2023 — State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) public comment period 
• Nov. 15–Dec. 2023 — Legislative process
  • Mayor Harrell transmitted the BEPS Legislation (News Release) on 11/15 to City Council for their review.
  • City Council deliberated on it via its 2023 Select Committee on Climate Action with public hearings on 11/29 and 12/7. On 12/7, the committee adopted BEPS unanimously and the full Council unanimously adopted it on 12/12. (Videos of all hearings may be watched on the Seattle Channel.)
    
• Dec. 13, 2023 — News Release: Mayor Harrell Signs Building Emissions Performance Standard (BEPS) Legislation into Law
  • See latest policy guides for details about the legislation.
• 2024–2025 — Rulemaking and concurrent program development. Visit the BEPS Rulemaking page for more details on process and timeline.
• 2025–2026 — Continued program development.
• 2027–2030 — Initial benchmarking verification and greenhouse gas requirements start.
• 2031–2035 — First GHGI targets must be met, with performance targets becoming gradually stronger through 2041–2050.

Stakeholder Engagement

OSE developed the building emissions performance standard policy with community input for the Mayor's and City Council's consideration. OSE met with climate advocates, labor organizations, building owners, building professionals, government partners, utilities, non-profit owners, community-based organizations, condo owners, and tenants. This included more than 125 stakeholder meetings, advisory group meetings, and webinars attended by hundreds of people between late 2021 to through 2023. In addition, OSE received dozens of comment and support letters, and more than 100 comments or questions were emailed to OSE or conveyed by phone. OSE also ran a technical advisory group and participated in the Housing Development Consortium’s affordable housing task force. 

• For more details, review the BEPS Stakeholder Engagement Summary in the appendix of the Director's Report.

BPS Advisory Group Summaries 

• Technical Advisory Group
  • TAG Member Roster
  • Meeting 1, 02/03/22 — slides and summary 
  • Meeting 2, 02/17/22 — slides and summary 
  • Meeting 3, 03/03/22 — slides and summary
  • Meeting 4, 03/31/22 — slides and summary
  • Meeting 5, 04/21/22 — slides and summary
  • Meeting 6, 06/02/22 — slides and summary
• Affordable Housing Advisory Group (Led by the Housing Development Consortium)
  • Webinars and meeting notes on HDC website

You can find Policy Development Phase Webinars and the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) Process Archive on the Resources page.