As we posted previously, a lesser-known provision of the Massachusetts legislature's 2022 An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind created M.G.L. ch.25A §20, which requires the reporting of energy usage data for buildings over 20,000 square feet statewide. The law went into effect this summer, and the first reporting deadline is fast approaching—energy use for calendar year 2024 will be required to be reported by June 30th, 2025.
The Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has released draft regulations governing the reporting process and will accept public comment through Wednesday, September 25, 2024 (DOER will also hold a virtual public hearing that day). Building owners should keep this on their radar, as the disclosure requirements will differ from parallel municipal efforts in some communities and be entirely new territory for others.
The concept will be familiar to some Greater Boston building owners who have been reporting energy usage for larger buildings for some time under Boston's BERDO, Cambridge's BEUDO, Chelsea's BERDO and Lexington's BEU-D. The City of Newton has its own BERDO in the works, and the City of Somerville is considering a rental unit energy disclosure ordinance. But even folks in these municipalities should track what the state is doing, which varies significantly from the municipal-level efforts.
A couple of things to note:
- The DOER regulations (unlike the BERDO/BEUDO schemes) place the reporting burden in the first instance on the municipal utilities, the distribution companies, the steam suppliers, etc. Building owners are required to supplement or provide additional information not covered by the energy suppliers' obligations.
- So far, the DOER regulations require energy usage reporting only for buildings > 20,000 SF. Still, the draft regulations contemplate looping in additional buildings co-located on the same parcels as large buildings. DOER was also given legislative authority to lower the 20,000 SF reporting threshold in the future.
- For building owners who are also presently required to report building energy use in the Massachusetts municipalities mentioned above, the draft state regulations in some areas do not align and create conflicting/duplicative burdens. These include the timing of deadlines, the size of buildings covered, how changes of ownership are treated, and when costly third-party verification is required.
In addition to the above, owners of large buildings statewide should be aware that DOER will publish the annual energy usage of all covered buildings and make it available for all to see in a building-by-building "fully text-searchable and readily sortable" format.
As noted previously, building energy reporting sets the stage for building emissions reductions. Both Boston and Cambridge began with a building energy reporting phase and used that data to set a baseline upon which declining emissions limits could be built. Those limits will start hitting the Boston buildings in 2025 and the Cambridge buildings in 2026. We will not be surprised if the Commonwealth ultimately follows suit.
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