The South Portland City Council recently passed comprehensive tree removal regulations to strike a balance between environmental preservation and development. The tree ordinance clarifies which trees are protected in the city, outlines activities subject to tree removal restrictions, and establishes procedures for reviewing activities impacting protected trees. Courtesy photo
SOUTH PORTLAND – To address challenges faced by the existing Energy and Water Use Performance Benchmarking ordinance, the South Portland City Council approved the first reading of the repeal of the ordinance during its meeting on Dec. 5. Sustainability Director Julie Rosenbach was present to answer any questions regarding the action. According to officials, the move reflects the city’s commitment to addressing challenges and redirecting efforts toward impactful and feasible sustainability initiatives.
The Benchmarking Ordinance, adopted in 2016 and amended in 2021, mandates buildings with gross floor areas exceeding 20,000 square feet (and municipal buildings with 5,000-plus square feet) to report their energy and water usage. The ordinance, aligned with the Climate Action Plan, aims to enhance energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and facilitate improved energy climate protection planning.
During a workshop on Nov. 21, the sustainability department presented a position paper seeking the repeal, citing significant challenges in its implementation. The key issues include difficulties in obtaining whole-building electricity data, incomplete data submissions from tenants and institutions, low compliance rates, and an unforeseen strain on city staff resources.
Susan Parmelee, sustainability program manager, emphasized the challenges in a memo to City Manager Scott Morelli. The memo detailed that despite collaborative efforts with property owners and engagement with Central Maine Power, the ordinance faced hurdles in obtaining comprehensive data, especially for properties with multiple tenants or complex structures like college campuses.
One major setback is the unavailability of a whole-building aggregated data platform from CMP. The anticipated platform launch, initially expected by the end of 2022, has faced technological delays, pushing the estimated release to the summer of 2024. The delay impacts the ability of building owners to access their tenants’ electricity data, hindering the ordinance’s effectiveness.
Parmelee said the Benchmarking Ordinance was intended to provide property owners with information about how their energy and water use compares to other similar properties and track their data from year to year.
“This would ideally result in behavioral and operational changes that improve efficiency,” Parmelee said. “However, since multi-tenant properties are unable to obtain whole-building data, and many properties are choosing not to report, we’re finding that the benchmarking data isn’t resulting in the energy efficiency improvements that we intended.”
Parmelee said rather than placing an additional workload burden on property owners, “we believe that providing financial incentives will be the pull property owners need to make energy efficient updates.” She said their role would include providing information to commercial properties about Efficiency Maine rebate opportunities that they may not be aware of and adopting the state’s C-PACE program to open up new lending opportunities.
“We’re also looking into developing a voluntary building tune-up program which would encourage regular maintenance of building systems and a transition to more efficient, electric HVAC systems with recommendations for no-cost or low-cost upgrades,” Parmelee said. “Improved building efficiency will result in lower utility bills for commercial properties and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the commercial building sector, which currently accounts for 23 percent of the city’s GHG emissions. This will contribute to our ultimate goal of reducing citywide GHG emissions 80 percent by 2050.”
Incomplete data submissions further compound the problem, with tenants refusing to provide data or offering partial-year data. This compromises the meaningful analysis of energy and water usage across building types, making it impossible to accurately compare efficiency.
The workload burden placed on property managers and city staff is another concern, particularly for multi-tenant properties. Collecting data from individual tenants, coupled with the technical challenges of the EPA reporting platform Energy Star Portfolio Manager, has proven to be a time-intensive process. The compliance rates under the Benchmarking Ordinance indicate that only about half of the non-municipal properties are currently compliant, with approximately a quarter submitting complete data.
Linda Cohen, councilor, moved for passage of the first reading.
“I’m happy to support the staff on the repeal of this ordinance<” Cohen said. “I did not support it when it passed originally. I’m happy to see it go.”
All voted in favor of passing the first reading of repealing the ordinance.
“We believe that the sustainability department could have a greater impact by enabling and promoting programs that will help financially incentivize property owners to make energy updates, such as Efficiency Maine rebates and Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) lending,” said Julie A. Rosenbach, sustainability director. “We are also looking into alternative programs, such as a building tune-up program. These programs encourage upgrading HVAC systems before they break thereby enabling more thoughtful transition to highly efficient, electrical equipment.
“Through this type of program, the sustainability office could offer resources and perhaps financial incentives to properties that conduct regular building tune-ups paired with benchmarking data. This data would be more useful because it would be targeted to specific upgrades. Other municipalities that have implemented similar programs have found that regular tune- ups result in a 10-15 percent annual energy savings for building owners. We will continue working with CMP to launch a platform that provides easily accessible data to building owners,”
The council also scheduled a vote for November 2024 to fill the vacant seat in the Legislature.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
