There is tremendous potential to achieve energy and greenhouse gas reductions in the U.S. building stock. Today, U.S. policymakers are turning their attention to existing buildings, where opportunities for greater energy efficiency are abundant but fraught with barriers that continue to severely impede progress. Comparatively rating building energy performance and disclosing ratings to the marketplace will help overcome many of these barriers, encouraging greater energy efficiency in new and existing buildings. Recently, several U.S. cities and states have enacted mandatory rating and disclosure policies targeting existing commercial buildings. The goals of these policies include raising the energy efficiency awareness of building owners, operators and real estate stakeholders who assign value; creating market recognition of energy efficiency and energy inefficiency in buildings; improving building energy code compliance by providing performance measurement data and ratings; creating a feedback loop and accountability among the designers and operators of buildings; and allowing governments to collect building performance data to construct better public policy for buildings. This paper examines how mandatory rating and disclosure policies can achieve these goals. The paper also presents a policy framework, based on best practices in current policies, that maximizes the market transformation potential of rating and disclosure policy.
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