The District Department of the Environment (DDOE)will hold a public meeting on February 21st at 12:30pm at 1200 First Street, N.E., 5th Floor, Washington, D.C., 20002, to provide interested parties an opportunity to comment the District’s regulations and associated guidance on Energy Performance Benchmarking of Privately-Owned Buildings. Please feel free to bring your lunch.

The District first proposed Energy Star benchmarking regulations on October 21, 2011, and having received extensive comments on the proposed regulations, now seeks further public input from stakeholders before we formally re-propose the regulations. The District is particularly interested in discussing the following subjects: benchmarking of multiple buildings that share meters and/or systems, benchmarking of multifamily residential buildings, and access to aggregate building-level utility data.  You are welcome to raise other issues as well.

Please note that, regardless of past notices about data being due in January or April 2012, no building owner will have to submit energy benchmarking data to the District prior to the regulation being finalized later this spring. Building owners will be given a grace period after the regulations are final in order to allow them time to collect needed data and benchmark their building(s).

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. Please RSVP to marshal.duer-balkind@dc.gov so we can plan for an appropriate room and materials.

If you have any questions, or wish to be removed from our benchmarking mailing list, contact Marshall Duer-Balkind at marshall.duer-balkind@dc.gov. If you are unable to attend the meeting, materials will be posted to the DDOE benchmarking website at www.ddoe.dc.gov/energybenchmarking following the meeting.