What is California AB 802, and what does it mean to you?
California AB 802
The Building Energy Use Benchmarking and Public Disclosure Program
This program applies to non-residential buildings above 50,000 gross square feet of floor area and multi-family buildings over 50,000 gross square feet with 17 or more utility accounts. These are known as “disclosable” buildings and must submit Annual Energy Benchmark Reports to the California Energy Commission (CEC). The ordinance also applies to government buildings.
The Energy Benchmark reports are due annually for “disclosable”, commercial buildings starting on June 1, 2018 and for “disclosable”, multi-family buildings beginning June 1, 2019. The results of the Energy Benchmarks will be made public a year after the first Benchmark reports are due.
AB 802 requires utilities to provide the required energy consumption data (13 months of energy-use data) for applicable buildings to the building owners upon request. The utility will provide “whole building” (aggregated) energy-use data to building owners without obtaining tenant authorization – if the number of utility accounts in the building meet the required minimum.
Cases in which tenant authorization will be required, include:
Buildings with fewer than three commercial utility accounts
Buildings with fewer than 5 residential utility accounts
Buildings with fewer than a combination of 5 residential and commercial utility accounts
Buildings in jurisdictions that already have an Energy Benchmark reporting requirement will not have separate reporting requirements to the State. It is anticipated that local jurisdictions will provide the report data to the state.
Building owners who do not comply (as well as those submitting incorrect or incomplete data) may be subject to civil penalties. The CEC will notify the offending party of the violation and provide 30-days to correct the violation.
Some reporting exemptions apply:
The building did not have a certificate of occupancy during the 12-month reporting period
The building is scheduled to be demolished with one year of the reporting data
The building is covered by an approved local building energy-use, benchmarking program
The building has more than half of the gross floor area used for scientific experiments requiring a controlled environment or industrial purposes.
For more information about the ordinance, visit the California Legislative site.
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