Cambridge, Mass., is latest locale to require energy usage disclosure

The City Council of Cambridge, Mass., approved the Building Energy Usage and Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO) that requires benchmarking and disclosure of building energy performance for large commercial, institutional, and multifamily buildings. Nine other U.S. cities—Austin, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.—along with two states and one county have enacted similar laws.

Cambridge’s new ordinance addresses energy and water use in commercial and institutional buildings that are 25,000 sf or larger, along with multifamily buildings that have 50 or more units, and municipal buildings over 10,000 sf. Owners must annually benchmark and report their properties’ energy use, water use, and building information using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Portfolio Manager tool.

The ordinance will be phased in for various building types and sizes, with municipal buildings reporting their data by the end of 2014. Starting in the second year of reporting, data collected will be disclosed annually through a public web site.

(http://www.imt.org/news/the-current/cambridge-mass.-passes-energy-benchmarking-ordinance)

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.