California

AB 531

On October 11, 2009, then Governor Schwarzenegger approved AB 531, which delays the mandatory disclosure date set by AB 1103.  Originally, all non-residential building owners had to disclose their energy rating to all prospective buyers, leasees or lenders of the building starting January 1, 2010.  AB 531, however, has removed that provision and instead requires owners to disclose this information based on a schedule of compliance that is currently being drafted by the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission.  Drafts of the bill can be found at http://www.energy.ca.gov/ab1103/documents/index.html

Proposed Draft Regulations

The California Energy Commission (CEC) is continuing to work on fine tuning the Energy Disclosure policy set out in AB 1103.  While no regulations have been finalized yet, the Commission is working towards a final draft.  The current draft includes some major changes to the most controversial areas of the bill, namely, confidentiality issues for utility companies in releasing energy consumption information, simplification of the schedule for disclosure, and a new proposed implementation date of Jan. 2011.  It also introduces a rating system (called a Performance Report) devised by the CEC to be used in California by buildings that are unable to utilize Energy Star’s rating system.  Further, the draft regulations provide an solution for building owners that are unable to get a single tenant to release their energy use data.  In those instances, a building owner can input what energy use information they have, disregard the tenant’s energy use, and subtract the tenant’s square footage and other characteristics of the tenant’s space in order to obtain a building rating.