KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Kansas City Council is mulling a proposal requiring large buildings to publicly report their energy consumption in an effort to increase efficiency.
Councilman Scott Taylor is sponsoring the ordinance with Mayor Sly James. He believes reporting energy consumption will encourage large buildings to become more energy efficient, he told The Kansas City Star (https://bit.ly/1z2q0zo ).
Taylor is confident that the proposal will be supported by a majority of taxpayers and citizens. But representatives of some of the city’s largest buildings are worried it will be an expensive mandate, putting them at a competitive disadvantage compared to other cities that don’t require reporting of energy consumption.
“You are labeling a building, and you are creating winners and losers,” said Sam Alpert of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Metropolitan Kansas City.
The association, which represents commercial buildings, supports voluntary benchmarking that sets score to compare buildings, but opposes the mandatory reporting. Several other groups associated with large commercial buildings, including Newmark Grubb Zimmer, Price Brothers, Luke Draily Construction, have sent letters of opposition to the city council.
The proposed ordinance calls for a method to track and assess energy and water use approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as phasing in the reporting of those scores.
The first year of the program only would affect city government buildings over 10,000 square feet, and by May 2018 would include any building in the city over 50,000 square feet.
If Kansas City adopts the ordinance, it will join 13 other U.S. cities that enforce this reporting.
“This is where every city is going in the country,” Taylor said.
The council’s finance committee is expected to consider the measure Wednesday.
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Information from: The Kansas City Star, https://www.kcstar.com
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