On December 7, 2022, the California Energy Commission announced that the State of California has joined the National Building Performance Standards Coalition, a White House initiative to advance the adoption of building performance standards in jurisdictions across the country. California is joining the nearly forty jurisdictions that participate in the coalition, which include two other states, Washington and Colorado. This commitment pledges jurisdictions to developing building performance standards and adopting the standards by Earth Day 2024. A leader in energy efficiency improvement, California developed Title 24 in 1976, the nation’s first energy efficiency standard for new and existing buildings and appliances. This standard is updated and implemented on a three-year cycle by the California Energy Commission (CEC), with the latest version going into effect on January 1, 2023, that updated the 2019 version to set a heat pump baseline in single-family residential buildings and set solar photovoltaic and energy storage requirements for commercial buildings.
California’s signature was announced alongside the White House releasing a draft version of the first-ever Federal Building Performance Standard, which will cut energy use and electrify equipment and appliances in 30 percent of the 300,000 federally owned buildings in the United States by 2030. According to the White House announcement, by adding California to the coalition and implementing the new Federal Building Performance Standard, one quarter of all large commercial and multifamily buildings in the United States are now moving toward building energy efficiency improvement policies.