Task Force Appointed to Create Building Standards for Entire State through HB21-1286 Consulted Heaviley with Firm that Apparently Had Only Two Staff Holding Engineering Degrees; Government Exempts Itself Along with Colleges and Others; Greenhouse Gases Play a Major Role in Bill.
Last fall, a task force from the Colorado Energy Office released recommendations that will effectively regulate how much energy certain buildings can use. The report is part of HB 21-1286 Energy Performance for Buildings.
That bill is part of Gov Polis’ steeplechase effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the state of Colorado. These recommendations are open for public comment until May.
New Building Standards are Pro-Electricity and Less Friendly to Colorado Building Owners
The recommendations affect buildings under specific tenancy arrangements that have a “gross floor area of 50,000 square feet or more …. ” There are numerous exemptions, but some property owners are still uneasy.
Building owners are deeply concerned about the costs. The recommendations, in so many words, will almost necessitate switching out cheap, natural gas-powered HVAC, plumbing, stoves, etc., for less efficient electrical appliances. The hope of environmentalists is to tie all these electric devices into a grid that, someday, will have mostly renewable energy and cut back on greenhouse gases.
Polis’ spokesperson Conor Cahill was quoted in the Gazette highlighting the technicality that an “individual building owner has the option of electrification, which is the best way to avoid being vulnerable to costly spikes in natural gas, either by itself or as part of a portfolio of measures, but no owner is required to electrify.”
Naturally, the selective saddling of certain building owners with the ankle weights of fines, paperwork, and bureaucracy to cut energy waste is polarizing. But where did these recommendations come from in the first place?
Questions About Experts in the Building Performance Colorado BPC Recommendations
Many English, history, communication, and ecology majors can connect ideas, practices, and skill sets into various job sectors. Some college degrees, especially those in the liberal arts, are easily translatable into other fields. But do these fields include engineering?
People in charge of bridges and skyscrapers are hopefully hard-edged, with proven knowledge and practice when it comes to equations, tolerances, advanced practical geometry, and related fields. Is that the case for these recommendations by the building standards task force?
On page three of this report, the Colorado Energy Office thanks Lotus Engineering & Sustainability, LLC, who “facilitated the Task Force and provided support for the development of the BPS recommendations,” according to the acknowledgments. HB 21-1286 and the BPS recommendations are green policy endeavors. Logically, a green engineering firm was chosen.
Looking closer at Lotus, the credentials for environmentalism are there. Going through the credentialing listed in the staff bios, degrees and professional experience in the earth sciences are evident. However, drilling down on the nuts-and-bolts S.T.E.M. qualifications of this firm, which is recommending energy efficiency standards for large buildings throughout Colorado (some of them residential) there’s less experience in the hard certifications.
Task Force Engineering FIrm Qualifications: Looking Closer
- Lotus Engineering & Sustainability, LLC, the firm in question, appears to be 15 employees
- Five of them have the job title “associate” and three have the job title “research associate.”
- President and owner, technically “co-owner,” of the engineering firm has an MBA, an undergrad in economics, and an undergrad in art history; if there are engineering credentials, they are not listed
- From the bio information provided, only two staff listed on the site have engineering degrees
- One of these engineers apparently has a BS in Engineering Science but looks to be part-time or is a former employee, as her LinkedIn page lists an employer that is not Lotus
- The other staff member listing formal engineering credentials has a bachelor’s and master’s in environmental engineering with various minors
- The other professional bios on Lotus’ staff page do not list degrees or credentialing specifically in engineering and maths, the E and the M of the S.T.E.M. fields
- The complete list of task force members, Table 1 of the recommendations paper, lists “one member representing professional engineers with experience working on systems for buildings” and “one member representing architects.”
Energy Cost; After the Fact
While the recommendations to reduce greenhouse gases are not set in stone, the “expected impact” has already been calculated. Group14, another engineering firm, also assisted the task force. They “provided a technical analysis of the expected impact of the recommendations.” This firm was also mentioned in the acknowledgments and has 15 individuals with “engineer” in their job titles.
Why wasn’t the big firm with the most technical, hard-science acumen consulted to determine the real-world, metal-on-metal feasibility of the recommendations instead of the result? Wouldn’t figuring out the possibility be a more important factor than the effects?
Covered Buildings and Who’s Exempt?
If there is any question about what constitutes “covered buildings,” the full text of the 25-page law grounding the recommendations refers to covered buildings 58 times for citizens and landlords who aren’t sure. Public buildings are exempt from the stringent environmental quotas if they meet specific requirements listed in numerous complex legal codes within Colorado statutes.
Covered Public Buildings Exempt from the Efficiency Recommendations (Under Certain Conditions):
- Buildings owned by the state of Colorado
- Buildings owned by the local government
- Private colleges
- State colleges
- Denver’s downtown community college Auraria is mentioned by name as exempt
- Very broadly defined qualifying utilities: “an electric or gas utility with 5,000 or more active commercial and industrial service connections, accounts or customers in the state…”
Colleges, some of the most actively pro-environmentalist locations in the US, are exempt. Government-owned buildings are exempt. Does this mean the buildings where the Colorado Energy Office and its task force created these recommendations are exempt? Are buildings in use by certain energy providers—possibly including for-profit companies burning coal and natural gas—in the state exempt?
Greenhouse Gases Bill and More Green Policy
The rules for these new building guidelines appear to exempt a large swath of those favoring the rule. This arrangement raises questions. Benchmarking programs are part of a growing apparatus of green policy, and green bureaucracy intended to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. And this bureaucratic apparatus appears to exempt itself from the rules quite a bit: those most involved are somehow also the least involved. This rule imbalance could be very consequential because buried in the policy papers is the opaque term “utility demand management,” which, looking closer, can mean a penciled outlining for the idea of energy rationing.
The heavy hand of environmentalism shows up in the policies but is it about buildings and energy first or last? And why would air quality and climate — used by all in the state — not be a universal sacrifice spread out instead of having numerous exemptions?
Commenting by the public on the new BPS rules is scheduled for May 19. Rules are set for provisional adoption by June 1.
