On April 12, 2022, Aspen City Council passed an ordinance approving the Building IQ program, an important milestone in helping the City of Aspen reach its science-based targets for reducing community greenhouse gas emissions. The ordinance applies to commercial and multifamily buildings within city limits and includes two components: energy benchmarking and building performance standards. The City of Aspen joins more than 40 communities nationwide that have benchmarking programs and eight communities with a building performance standard (BPS) policy.
The ordinance, effective June 1, 2022, will first focus on benchmarking, an annual process where buildings track and report their energy and water consumption over time. The simple act of benchmarking can decrease energy use by 2-3% per year. The second phase, building performance standards (BPS), requires property owners to meet performance targets by actively improving their buildings over time. The details of this phase will be designed through stakeholder engagement and defined by fall 2023. The program implementation will be led by a local nonprofit, Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), which will be responsible for supporting building owners and managers through every step of the process.
