The City of Detroit unveiled a new climate strategy today after the Detroit City Council unanimously approved an energy and water benchmarking ordinance for existing buildings during its final session of the year.
The Detroit Climate Strategy details short-term actions that the city and its partners will undertake to combat climate change. The strategy aims to reduce municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2034 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
“The Detroit Climate Strategy is a crucial guide for the city to meet our climate goals and maintain a healthy living environment for all residents,” said Jack Akinlosotu, director of the Office of Sustainability, in a statement.
The new policy mandates annual energy and water usage reporting from all municipal buildings and commercial and multifamily buildings over 100,000 gross square feet (GSF) starting in 2024. By 2025, the requirement will extend to commercial and multifamily buildings above 25,000 GSF but below 100,000 GSF.
Kendal Kuneman, program manager with the Detroit 2030 District, co-leads the Detroit Green Task Force’s Energy Waste Reduction Committee alongside Ben Dueweke, director of community partnerships with Walker-Miller Energy Services. The pair have advocated for the ordinance since 2020.
Kuneman said the city’s next step will be to develop a list of buildings required to comply with the ordinance; preliminary estimates have ranged between 2500 to 3500, she said.
Building owners will be required to report their data through an online energy and emissions tracking platform such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.
“To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we need to come up with solutions driven by data, not best guesses, ” said City Councilman and Green Task Force Chair Scott Benson. “This ordinance, along with other key strategies in the Detroit Climate Strategy, makes our city a leader in sustainability.”
Building-related activities accounted for 63% of Detroit’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. Benchmarking buildings’ energy and water usage is expected to reduce consumption, lower operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions and increase savings for property owners and tenants.
According to the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA), buildings account for a large percentage of energy use in the built environment and provide substantial opportunities for reducing pollution.
Detroit joins Chicago, Columbus, Minneapolis, and Ann Arbor in implementing a building benchmarking ordinance. Grand Rapids is also considering such an ordinance. Several states, including California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland have statewide benchmarking requirements.
Kuneman said the policy will serve a crucial role in monitoring the city’s energy and water consumption and will highlight opportunities for interventions like efficiency upgrades to further the city’s sustainability objectives.
She said the ordinance will allow city officials to direct owners of poorly performing buildings to resources, such as funding sources or third-party entities, that can assist them in improving building performance. Some building managers already implement the type of reporting required under the ordinance, she noted.
“Some of them are already doing it, but maybe not inputing the data, but they already have energy management happening within their organization,” she said, noting that almost 500 Detroit buildings encompassing nearly 62 million square feet are already participating in a voluntary benchmarking program through the Detroit 2030 District.
Kuneman said one thing that has made participation much easier is an ongoing Building Energy Data Hub pilot partnership with DTE Energy and the Ann Arbor and Detroit 2030 Districts, which automatically uploads energy usage data into the Energy Star Portfolio Manager platform using an API.
DTE spokesperson Tamika Banks told Planet Detroit that the company plans to roll out the tool to all customers in 2024.
“DTE Energy’s new Building Energy Data Hub seamlessly uploads building’s energy consumption data to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager,” she said. “The new tool is currently being piloted with nearly 200 participants in the Detroit and Ann Arbor 2030 Districts. DTE plans to roll out the Data Hub to customers in the new year.”
Bedrock Detroit spokesperson Tom Goulding told Planet Detroit that the ordinance’s adoption is “a critical next step toward Detroit’s goal of lowering its carbon footprint.”
“The benchmarking data provides building owners with important information to measure the progress of sustainability initiatives,” Goulding added. “Bedrock is committed to these goals and improving overall building efficiency.”
Dueweke points to the ordinance’s transparency element, which he said will require public accountability. How that transparency element is implemented “will be the prerogative of the city and how they administer this program,” he said. He pointed to the City of Chicago, which publicly reports energy scores by building, as one example.
He said transparency helps educate the public about the importance of building performance and creates an environment where high-performing buildings can be recognized and celebrated. “It also helps to identify lower performers so that attention and resources can be directed toward them in an effort to achieve energy and cost savings,” he said.