County Joins White House Building Performance Standards Coalition

Montgomery County joined forces with state and local governments across the country—including in Prince George’s County, Annapolis and Washington, D.C.—in the National Building Performance Standard (BPS) Coalition. It is a collaboration launched by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Building performance standards paired with complementary programs and policies will enable the meeting of health, equity and climate goals.

The Biden-⁠Harris Administration launched the Coalition on January 21st as a first-of-its-kind partnership between 33 state and local governments dedicated to delivering cleaner, healthier, and more affordable buildings.

“Montgomery County is honored to join this impressive group of local and state leaders working toward smart, achievable goals to reduce greenhouse gases by implementing innovative and equitable building performance standards,” said County Executive Elrich. “We are already on this path, having submitted legislation to the Montgomery County Council in April 2021 that will expand the number of buildings covered by the County’s Benchmarking Law and require the use of less energy in public and private multifamily and commercial buildings. We have also improved our requirements for new buildings, and in 2021, we adopted the ambitious Montgomery County Climate Action Plan. That is our County’s strategic roadmap to reduce our communitywide greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2027 and 100 percent by 2035 using a racial equity and social justice lens.”

Through the coalition, Montgomery County is committing to increase community and local stakeholder engagement to co-design building performance standards and complementary policies and programs. This will be done with the goal of advancing legislation or regulation, with adoption by Earth Day 2024.

In pursuing our commitments as a member of the National BPS Coalition, Montgomery County will be able to leverage technical support via federal agencies including the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

For more information about the coalition, visit www.nationalBPSCoalition.org.  Read the County’s full press release here. Learn more about Montgomery County’s progress toward establishing a Building Energy Performance Standard here.