Think Out Loud

Oregon becomes latest state to take aim at greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings

By Sheraz Sadiq (OPB)
Sept. 5, 2023 10 p.m. Updated: Sept. 12, 2023 7:19 p.m.

Broadcast: Wednesday, Sept. 6

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This summer, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently signed into law an ambitious, $90 million climate package to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and leverage as much as $1 billion in federal funds to tackle climate change. Among its provisions are rebates on medium and heavy-duty electric trucks and help for homeowners to offset the cost of installing heat pumps. It also makes Oregon the fourth state in the nation, along with Washington, Colorado and Maryland, to require building performance standards for large commercial buildings which, along with residential buildings, accounted for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon in 2021.

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The Oregon Department of Energy will oversee the state’s program which will begin in phases starting in 2028 and develop energy targets for buildings 20,000 square feet and greater. The standards do not, however, apply to schools, dormitories, hospitals, parking garages and multifamily residential buildings. Joining us is freelance journalist Erika Bolstad to talk about her reporting on building performance standards and the impact they could have in Oregon.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Earlier this summer when Governor Tina Kotek signed a $90 million climate package into law, Oregon became the fourth state in the nation to require building performance standards for larger commercial buildings. The basic idea is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that come from these buildings. The Oregon Department of Energy will oversee the program that will be phased in starting in 2028. Freelance journalist Erika Bolstad has written about these standards and joins us now. Welcome back to the show.

Erika Bolstad: Oh, thanks for having me.

Miller: Why is it that many cities, and now a handful of states including Oregon, have been focused on the carbon emissions of buildings?

Bolstad: So it’s on the one hand kind of low hanging fruit, but also a big piece of the pie, to kind of mix my metaphors a little bit there. An estimated maybe 30% of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide come from buildings, whether it’s homes or commercial properties or multifamily properties, big box stores, etc. And in the Portland area alone, maybe half of emissions are from buildings. And so if you start to think about the numbers, and if you’re a state like Oregon that has a real priority around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a piece of pie, a low hanging fruit, whatever you want to call it, that is readily accessible and easily measurable and manageable to start to work on.

Miller: How big might the carbon footprint of a shopping mall or a large office building be?

Bolstad: So I am not great at that building engineer math. But I think if you look at them collectively, if you look at a city or you look at a shopping center with a lot of big buildings, you can start to see how that big square footage might have an impact on a community. It might be a way of addressing greenhouse gasses. I think there’s an estimated 5-7% that this could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions over the next 12 years or so.

Miller: What does Oregon’s new law require of larger commercial buildings?

Bolstad: So the big ones are going to be the ones that have to do this first. And that will be buildings over 200,000 square feet. Those are big buildings, like a Walmart is maybe 175,000 square feet, or a Target or a big box store of some sort. If you think about the US Bancorp Tower in downtown Portland, that’s about 1.2 million square feet.

Miller: Big Pink.

Bolstad: Yeah, Big Pink. So those are big buildings, big structures that are first in line to have to do this. And then over time, smaller buildings, smaller commercial properties throughout Oregon will have to comply with what starts out with reporting. They just have to measure at first how much greenhouse gas emissions they are emitting, and also their energy use as well.

Miller: And then what sorts of upgrades or improvements or retrogrades might building owners put in to reduce their energy use? What could this actually mean?

Bolstad: So this could be pretty simple, like changing the kind of lighting that a building has. That’s a really easy fix in a lot of places. It could be improving windows, it could be improving the efficiency of the heating and cooling system in a building.

And then another consideration is software that actually manages some of those things, that looks at energy use and maybe changes when the lights come on or when the air conditioning comes on when people are in or out of the building.

Miller: I should note that the standards don’t apply to parking garages, schools, dorms, hospitals, university buildings, and some others. So there are carve outs here. We’re really talking here about commercial buildings. The owners of smaller commercial buildings won’t have to reduce their carbon footprints, at least not yet. But many of them will have to do what are essentially energy audits. What does that mean? And what’s the idea behind that?

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Bolstad: So you can’t really fix a problem until you measure it, right? Portland has actually been measuring a lot of commercial properties for the last I think about five or six years, and they might start measuring multifamily residential properties too. So they’re measuring their energy use, they’re measuring their greenhouse gas emissions. And a lot of this is a voluntary compliance program right now. So there are incentives in the law, and it takes effect over a number of years. Really, the smallest buildings don’t have to do it until 2030, and those are buildings that are over 35,000 square feet.

And so there’s a lot of time to work on these changes. And if you measure it at first, then you know what you have to do, and you have a benchmark to improve from, you have something that you can say “here is the level that we started at, and here is where we need to go.”

Miller: Is the thinking, and has this been borne out, that even if there isn’t a mandate to lower your carbon footprint, that if you’re required to chart it or you just chart it yourself, that you’re more likely to actually reduce it, even if you don’t have to?

Bolstad: Yeah, I think so. I think that that is probably an intent behind the law. I mean there are really good reasons that building owners and big property owners and management companies might want to do this that are beyond just the kindness of their heart or caring about climate change. This is something that could save them a lot of money in a lot of places. This is something that could reduce the cost of operating buildings, it reduces the rent that they have to charge. So there’s a lot of sort of knock on effects from this.

And it also makes the indoor air quality inside of buildings a lot better, which is a net benefit for a lot of people. Most of us spend about 90% of our day in a building. So if you work in a building or live in a building that is efficient and has cleaner air, then your health is better and your energy bills are lower.

Miller: What kinds of responses have there been from property developers or commercial building owners in the cities and states that have already implemented these kinds of standards?

Bolstad: Well as you can see, the states that are doing this already are states that are committed to climate action plans.

Miller: Washington, California, Colorado, Oregon.

Bolstad: And so these are places that have already decided that addressing climate change is a huge priority. Those are places that have decided that they want to go in that direction. And so I think that that says something about where this is happening.

So the objections, they’re coming from developers, they’re coming sometimes from home building associations and some construction interests. And there are some places where, in Washington DC and Seattle for example, there’s been an effort to slow down the roll out of this because some commercial property owners are concerned that it could be a burden on them when they’re dealing with a glut of commercial property on the market right now.

Miller: Which is the case in Oregon and nationwide. It’s interesting you noted that. Are you expecting that in Oregon as well? For example, Willamette Week just a couple of weeks ago had a cover story all about the gigantic issues that are facing us now and could get even worse in terms of unused office space. Could that affect the rollout of this plan?

Bolstad: I think it’ll be interesting to see if it does, and if there is some pushback in the rulemaking process in Oregon this year.

But the flip side of that is that buildings that do this are often way more attractive to tenants, so they’re able to command higher rents. There’s a lot of companies that want to be in a building where their employees have better air quality or where they’re not paying as much for their energy costs, or maybe even ideologically they believe that they should be in a building and that their business mission or purpose aligns with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Miller: What’s the connection between Oregon’s new law, and we’re talking about one big set of provisions from that, and federal money from the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act?

Bolstad: This bill that passed, the building standards, is part of a bigger package of climate resilience action that the state is going to be taking over the next decade or so. So the idea is that you pass these standards here in Oregon so that you can access some of the Inflation Reduction Act money, some of the other federal money that will be coming down. I think I’ve seen something like a $90 million investment in Oregon that pulls down billions of dollars, potentially, in federal investment. So states that consider climate a priority have made it a priority to pass some of this kind of legislation.

Miller: Erika, thanks very much.

Bolstad: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Erika Bolstad is a Portland-based freelance journalist and author. She joined us to talk about Oregon’s new building performance standards for medium sized and larger commercial buildings.

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