On June 26th, Cambridge City Council passed final amendment language to the Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO). The amendments will update the current ordinance to require buildings to lower their emissions over time, with timelines and reduction targets corresponding to the size and type of building. Information presented at the hearing can be found here, and the video recording is here.
During the hearing, an amendment was brought forth to eliminate all residential properties, regardless of ownership structure, from the emissions reduction requirements of the proposed amendments. The council voted in favor of this motion, therefore no residential properties (as defined in the ordinance text) will be subject to Building Performance Standards, yet these buildings will continue to report benchmarking data on an annual basis.
The amended text of the ordinance can be viewed here.
In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a global report indicating that carbon pollution will need to be cut by approximately two-thirds by 2035 in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. With the adoption of these newest amendments to the Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO), Cambridge’s BEUDO emissions will be reduced approximately 50 percent by 2030 compared to today and reduced by approximately 70 percent by 2035.
