Last month, Assembly Bill 802 (AB 802) was signed into law in California. Effective January 1, 2016, AB 802 replaces the existing energy use disclosure program, AB 1103, which has been the subject of previous Dykema real estate alerts (which can be found here and here).

When AB 802 goes into effect on January 1, 2016, AB 1103 will be repealed and there will be no energy use disclosure requirement on the part of the owners and landlords in place. However, while AB 1103 remains in effect, the disclosure requirements relating to building energy use shall continue to apply to prospective transactions (sales, financing, leases) of entire nonresidential buildings which are 10,000 square feet or more.

Under newly enacted AB 802 in 2016, each utility will be required to maintain records of energy usage data. Beginning January 1, 2017, utilities will be required to disclose the benchmarked energy usage following a request from the building owner or operator.

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