Building Emissions Platform
Part of the Climate Justice Platform 2024
Context
Green Building Codes are essential in ensuring that anything built in the city is contributing to goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050. There are nationally recognized certifications like LEED, and City of Portland initiatives to update standards for multifamily homes and rental apartments. These buildings account for a significant portion of Portland’s greenhouse gas emissions. By creating new standards for these properties, which often house low- and moderate-income residents, we can reduce energy consumption, lower utility costs for residents, and ultimately help to cut carbon emissions.
Actions
In order to reach net zero by 2050 and protect marginalized communities from the effects of Climate Change, the following ongoing proposals and building standards must be prioritized
- Fully implement the HEART Standards
- In order to ensure that the effects of climate change don’t disproportionately affect vulnerable communities, the City must implement the following minimum requirements for existing apartments: Healthy Housing, Equitable Energy, Anti-displacement, Resilience, Temperature.
- Multifamily home energy reporting: collect metrics to track whether we’re reaching emissions reduction goals
- Currently the City of Portland has a plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and a 50% reduction by 2030. In order to reach these targets, the City needs accountability metrics.
- Single family homes and large commercial buildings are currently required to report to the City, energy costs/use and carbon emissions. By requiring reporting for multifamily buildings, it would allow the City to better track emissions.
- Combined, commercial and multifamily residential buildings account for half of building sector carbon emissions. By implementing these standards, the City will have to be accountable to the data collected, ensuring that the already set goals of 2030 and 2050 are reached.
- Speedily implement tenant climate and health notifications, beginning in 2025.
- Starting in 2026, the City of Portland will require owners of duplexes or larger to notify tenants of key climate/health information: how to access potential avg and peak monthly energy costs, resources to help low-income renters pay utility bills, health risks associated with using natural gas/electric stoves, benefits of ventilation, and presence of cooling measures (AC, Tree Shade, etc). These requirements will give tenants critical information on the full costs of rental units allowing them to make good and informed choices. The City must push the implementation to 2025 in order to protect tenants’, health and safety.
- Continue promoting LEED certification for public buildings.
- LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the world’s most widely used green building rating system making it a powerful environmental accountability tool. The City should continue to support and expand efforts to ensure that all new public buildings and major renovations aim for LEED Silver certification or higher.
- Implement better cooling standards, including building retrofits and Right to Cooling
- Heat Domes have become a more commonplace occurrence over the last decade, leading to multiple deaths in the State. Currently the City of Portland has minimal to no standards to alleviate heat dome exposure. The City of Portland must implement the following.
- Build more cooling shelters so they are easily accessible. Oftentimes the elderly and those without vehicles are not able to reach cooling shelters easily, through expansion, this will help alleviate this issue.
- Help to retrofit buildings to be more resilient to heat-domes. Requiring A/C installation, Shade, Tinted Windows, Green Roofs, and more will ensure that indoor exposure to heat is minimized.
- Pass a Right to Cooling. Cities like Phoenix have implemented right to cooling standards which require landlords to keep apartments below or at a certain temperature. The City of Portland should go further and ensure that a Right to Cooling also means: increasing urban canopies, ensuring an access to cooling to be both day/night, and that an equitable approach is taken in the implementation of cooling standards. This will make the CIty of Portland properly heat resistant against what is likely to become an ever worsening problem.
Case Studies
June Key Delta Center:
“How an inspiring group of women built one of the greenest buildings in Portland,” Grist, August 17, 2015, https://grist.org/cities/how-an-inspiring-group-of-women-built-one-of-the-greenest-buildings-in-portland/.
Lincoln High School:
During the recent renovation for Lincoln High-School, the school was able to achieve LEED Gold certification. The high school now has solar panels generating electricity for the school, it has very good energy efficiency, and it was built using sustainable materials. It provides a good model and example for other public schools in Portland.
- “A sneak peek inside the brand-new Lincoln High School,” KGW News, May 26, 2022, https://www.kgw.com/article/news/education/sneak-peek-new-lincoln-high-school/283-b6dbb230-7ecd-47cb-a5e7-e0501408ecf4.
Various cities across the country have implemented right to cooling, such as:
- City of Dallas Cooling Ordinance, Dallas City Code, Section III, Chapter 27-11
- The landlord provides air conditioning but is protected against prosecution if at least one habitable room is 85°F when outside temperature is over 110°F.
- City of Phoenix Cooling Ordinance, Phoenix City Code, Chapter 39-5
- The landlord provides cooling of all habitable rooms and bathrooms with permanently installed cooling facilities. The maximum allowed indoor temperature is 82°F by air conditioning or 86°F by evaporative cooling.
Citations
“About Multifamily Energy Reporting and Tenant Notice,” City of Portland, https://www.portland.gov/bps/climate-action/multifamily-energy/about-multifamily-energy#:~:text=BPS%20seeks%20to%20help%20reduce,emissions%20to%20zero%20by%202050.
Climate and Health Standards Stakeholder Engagement videos, building and tenant working groups, Portland BPS YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfrETCbg3gsiXv0UZM7oEGTBd0-6MzeNv.
“Developing standards for rental apartments,” City of Portland, https://www.portland.gov/bps/climate-action/building-standards/project-overview/rental-apartments.
ENB-9.01 – Green Building Policy, Portland City Code.
Ysabelle Kempe, “Should tenants have a right to cooling? More cities say yes amid record heat,” Smart Cities Dive, August 20, 2024, https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/tenant-right-cooling-laws-cities-extreme-heat-indoor-maximum-temperature/724519/.
“LEED Rating System,” US Green Building Council, https://www.usgbc.org/leed.
“LEED Scorecard,” US Green Building Council, https://www.usgbc.org/leed-tools/scorecard.
Endorsed by:
Endorsed full Climate Justice Platform:
Laura Streib (D2)
Jonathan Tasini (D2)
Brian Conley (D3)
Chad Lykins (D4)
Moses Ross (D4)
Andra Vltavín (D4)
Endorsed this section:
Stanley Penkin (D4)