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Seattle has reached a milestone of providing more than 1,000 rebates and no-cost upgrades to help low-to-middle income switch to an energy-efficient electric heat pump!

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City of Seattle has provided more than 1,000 rebates to help residents convert off of oil heat.

The City of Seattle has hit another milestone in its commitment to environmental and climate justice and a greener city – reaching 1,000 rebates offered to transition homes from oil-to-electric heat! Targeting climate pollution in buildings is one of the City’s priorities, and the Clean Heat program rebates incentivize and support building owners to make this transition. We sat down with OSE’s Climate and Energy Advisor Christine Bunch, who manages the Clean Heat program, to learn more about the program and why the transition from oil-to-electric heat is so important.  

What is the Clean Heat Program?

The Clean Heat Program helps the city move toward the goal of reducing climate pollution by incentivizing households heating with oil to transition to energy-efficient electric heat pumps. The program provides an instant $1,500 rebate that our participating contractors apply to the customer invoice. Households that are income-qualified can receive a no-cost heat pump conversion through the Office of Housing.  

When we launched the program in 2017, we estimated there were around 18,000 households with oil heat. Since then, we’ve seen between 1,300-1,500 households per year transition off oil, which means the total number of homes with oil is now between 10,000 and 13,000. Recently, Seattle City Council approved $2.6 million in funding in the 2023 and 2024 budget for oil conversion incentives, while repealing the oil tax ordinance.  

You can also check out our website, Seattle’s Clean Heat Program, for more info on the program. 

Why is the City trying to convert from oil heat?  

Oil heat is extremely carbon-intensive. It’s much dirtier than natural gas and electricity, and a heat pump is three times as efficient in heating than an oil furnace. Oil is stored in underground tanks that often rust, erode, and eventually leak and can contaminate the soil and groundwater. The clean up for a an oil leak can be costly and disruptive. Oil is also expensive. Global events such as the invasion in Ukraine caused the price of oil to spike and the future price of oil only looks to be trending upward. So not only does oil negatively contribute to climate impacts, but it’s also more expensive for homeowners.  
 

Why else is it important for homeowners to think about transitioning off of oil heat?  

We want homeowners to think about using the cleanest form of energy for not just themselves but for their community as well. It is important for homeowners to consider how old their oil tank is and the environmental and economic risks that come with using oil heat. Hopefully, this, along with the incentives offered by the City, will motivate those with oil to convert to a heat pump as soon as possible.  

What are some benefits of a Heat Pump?  

A newly installed heat pump. Heat pumps can help reduce heating and cooling costs.

Electric heat pumps have more benefits than just reducing carbon pollution. An energy-efficient electric heat pump is three times more efficient than an oil furnace. It can help you reduce heating and cooling costs and improve the health, safety, and comfort of your home while also helping the environment. Heat pump technology has also vastly improved over the last five to ten years. Heat pumps have the technology to detect changes in temperature and adjust accordingly, and as the technology of heat pumps has advanced, so has their reliability.   

Another benefit of a heat pump is that it provides air conditioning. As we have seen over the past summers here in Seattle, hitting temperatures of over 85 degrees is the new norm, and a heat pump provides cooling and comfort in these summer months, where the temperatures continue to rise. Heat pumps also have filtration, and some offer the option to increase the heat pump’s filtration system to protect from climate impact hazards such as the wildfire smoke and poor air quality we continue to experience during the summers.

What are the next steps for being on track to transition off all oil heating by 2028? 

Our goal is to accelerate the adoption of clean heating technology and ensure people have access to clean heat and that it’s affordable. The rebate is something that accelerates and influences that decision to convert. It is an instant rebate, where you can choose your own contractor from our list of participating installers, and whoever you decide to use will give you $1,500 off on the invoice. On January 1, 2023, there will be a $2,000 tax credit that kicks in, but we still need to see what additional rebates may become available as a result of the federal government’s Inflation Reduction Act. We expect to get more information on that in the coming months and will update our web site with more information..  

Is there a right time to think about converting?   

Anytime, or as soon as possible. We are in the middle of winter, but soon there will be a lot of demand for air conditioning as well. We suggest you start researching now, as contractors will become increasingly busy as the year progresses. The program website, nomoreoilheat.com has a list of participating contractors you can contact for more information and no-cost estimates. The instant rebate is for everyone, but for households with lower incomes, folks can contact the Office of housing for a no-cost heat pump conversion. You can download an application from the Office of Housing homewise page. Also, once a home is electric, it is eligible for additional assistance and additional weatherization improvements.  

Is there any advice you’d like to offer those still with oil? 

Be prepared, and be proactive before it’s too late. If you wait, you could end up with an even more expensive repair and/or a tank leak while also contributing to our City’s pollution. 

June 16: Join OSE for the Second Building Performance Standards Online Open House

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Developing a successful Seattle Building Performance Standards (BPS) policy will require understanding and offering solutions to meet the challenges – technical, financial, operational, or otherwise – that building owners, managers, and tenants may face in making upgrades. OSE is committed to a collaborative effort to maximize benefits to building owners and tenants and to ensure equitable pathways to high quality green jobs, especially for people of color and women.

On June 16th from 12pm to 1:30pm OSE is hosting a zoom webinar to give an update on our Building Performance Standard policy work to date and share highlights of stakeholder feedback received so far on the potential policy. In this open house, OSE will share the draft BPS policy framework and the policy timeline, and take comments and questions on the draft policy framework. Register for June 16th webinar.

Catching Up on the April 5 Open House

On April 5, OSE hosted the first open house, attended by 350 people, which gave an overview of how buildings contribute to climate pollution and the ways this pollution affects people’s health and our community, especially impacting communities of color. Staff presented on existing City policies to reduce climate pollution and discussed building performance standards (BPS) — what they are, how they work, how they might complement current state and city policies, and their benefits. Following the presentation, staff responded to audience questions and comments, which are summarized in the Q & A below. 

Why Building Performance Standards?

Seattle Building Performance Standards are projected to reduce building sector emissions 27% by 2050. They are the single most impactful building policy the City can implement in the next few years to reduce climate pollution and transition toward cleaner, healthier buildings.

Building performance standards are energy or emissions targets that existing buildings must meet over time to improve energy efficiency and reduce climate impacts. The City is developing an approach that would gradually phase out carbon pollution from existing commercial and multifamily buildings 20,000 square feet (ft2) and larger through mandatory emissions targets, beginning 2026 for the largest commercial buildings, that become more stringent over time, to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2045.

For more information on Building Performance Standards, see the OSE website at: www.seattle.gov/building-performance-standards.

Exploring Building Performance Standards: A New Policy to Reduce Building Sector Emissions

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In Seattle, buildings are one of the largest and fastest growing sources of climate pollution, responsible for more than a third of our City’s greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions pollute our air, accelerate climate change, and harm people’s health and the environment, disproportionately impacting communities of color and people with lower incomes. Building performance standards (BPS) are energy or emissions targets that existing buildings must meet over time to improve energy efficiency and reduce climate impacts.

Learn more and sign up for the Open House at seattle.gov/building-performance-standards

The Office of Sustainability and Environment is conducting stakeholder and community engagement on creating draft legislation for new City of Seattle ‘Building Performance Standards,’ which will require commercial and multifamily buildings 20,000 square feet and larger to gradually reduce climate-polluting emissions over time towards a goal of cleaner, healthier, ‘net-zero’ carbon emissions buildings by 2050, while improving the quality of life for residents and creating local, well-paying jobs.

At an Open House on April 5, OSE will present about the potential policy and the links between buildings, climate pollution, equity, and health. The meeting will include listening sessions to hear participant’s ideas and concerns. OSE is planning another online Open House for late spring in the evening (date TBD). Presentations and meeting summaries will be posted online after the events. 

Closed captioning will be provided. Live translation is available upon request – email cleanbuildings@seattle.gov to request. 

2021 Energy Benchmark Reports Due July 1

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Energy performance (benchmarks) for the 2021 calendar year must be updated in Portfolio Manager by July 1, 2022 for all multifamily and non-residential buildings 20,000 SF or larger.

To be in compliance, your building’s Portfolio Manager account must be:

  • Updated with current space use details and accurate energy meter data. If you have default data values assigned by the EPA you will need to correct them.
  • Updated with current contact information. 
  • Able to generate a 2021 December ending Energy Use Intensity (EUI) and ENERGY STAR® score (if available), and
  • Successfully shared with the City of Seattle Annual Reporting Portfolio Manager account.

Once you have completed all the required steps to make annual updates and share your 2021 benchmark report, you can check your building’s compliance status on the Seattle Benchmarking Compliance Portal. 

Make sure to check out our COVID FAQ if your building use has been impacted by COVID.

White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory Visits Seattle to Talk Buildings and Climate

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The buildings we live and work in are responsible for more than 1/3rd of Seattle’s climate pollution, primarily due to the on-site burning of fossil fuels such as fracked gas and oil for heating, hot water and appliances. OSE’s Buildings & Energy team works to develop and implement policies and programs to mitigate climate change in the buildings space, which covers commercial, multi-family, residential, and even our own municipal facilities.

Chair Mallory at Hobson Place

On October 6th, OSE was thrilled to host Chair Brenda Mallory and staff from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), along with Seattle’s Finance and Administrative Services (FAS), City Light, and Office of Housing to talk about some of the work we are doing to improve the energy efficiency, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Seattle’s building stock.

First up was a stop at the Seattle Justice Center, which hosts both the Seattle Police Headquarters and the Seattle Municipal Court. Seattle has been at the forefront nationally to increase building efficiency and reduce emissions in existing buildings through policies like Energy Benchmarking and Building Tune-Ups programs. Check out this Seattle Justice Center Case Study detailing how the building operations team and the Tune-Up Specialist team collaborated to go above and beyond on a suite of improvements to the Seattle Justice Center.

CEQ staff then joined OSE, City Light, and the Office of Housing at Hobson Place, a permanent supportive housing building and clinic. This building is using strategies to maximize efficiency, including electric heat pumps instead of fossil fuels, improved insulation, solar, and more, and is on track to be the first permanent supportive housing project in Washington State to achieve Passive House certification.

Both the Seattle Justice Center and Hobson place are examples of Seattle’s approach to meeting its climate goals in the building sector in action. With new construction, like Hobson Place, the City is working to stop buildings going up from incorporating fossil fuels in the systems. In February, Seattle updated its Commercial Energy Code to limit fossil fuels for most uses in new construction, substantial alterations, and when equipment is upgraded. And for existing buildings, we are working to transition away from gas-fired systems to efficient electric systems.

The next urgent priority for Seattle is to establish climate pollution standards, or building performance standards, for our largest existing commercial and multifamily buildings. Washington State has established innovative Clean Building Performance Standards to deepen the energy efficiency of existing commercial buildings. This is a great next step towards better performing buildings and we are very supportive of the state’s work, but in terms of GHG emissions from Seattle buildings, we project to see only approximately 4% reduction in overall building sector emissions. In contrast, by developing and implementing Seattle specific building performance standards, we expect to be able to reduce overall building emissions by 27%.

For more information about Building Performance Standards including more details about the Washington State law, check out OSE’s website: https://www.seattle.gov/environment/climate-change/buildings-and-energy/building-performance-standards

Seattle’s Building Emissions are Rising – Here’s What the Data Tells Us

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Seattle’s buildings are responsible for more than one-third of the city’s core greenhouse gas emissions – and rising. According to the most recent greenhouse gas inventory, climate-polluting emissions in buildings increased 8% between 2016 and 2018, driven by burning fossil fuels like fracked gas and oil for heat, hot water, and cooking.

Seattle’s Energy Benchmarking Program collects and analyzes building energy performance data from more than 3,500 of the city’s largest commercial and residential buildings (more than 375 million square feet!). By comparing this data over time, we can investigate what’s happening with the City’s larger buildings (over 20,000 SF) to identify trends and create data-driven policies and programs in response.

Fossil Gas Driving Emissions in New Construction

If you thought the cranes dotted across Seattle’s skyline were increasing in recent years, you were right. Between 2016 and 2019, Seattle added more than 200 new large buildings (over 20,000 SF), representing over 50 million square of new construction. This continues a trend from past benchmarking reports where we are seeing an increase in the average height and size of new buildings. In fact, over 40% of Seattle’s building area from these larger buildings has been built since 2000.

Newer buildings generally are larger and have more amenities than older buildings, and are on average more energy efficient and have higher ENERGY STAR scores. But since many of these buildings are being built with fossil gas-powered hot water and heating systems – and because they are bigger – the overall greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase.

Recent updates to Seattle’s building energy code to eliminate fossil fuels for most space and water heating for new buildings will go a long way to cap growth in greenhouse gas emissions from any new larger buildings, but these changes will take time to phase in and be reflected in future benchmarking reports.

Existing Buildings are Reducing Electricity Use – But Not Fossil Fuels

From 2014 to 2019, total greenhouse gas emissions from existing benchmarked buildings increased 0.4% even as total energy use decreased 8.3%. Though the construction boom is driving overall higher energy use and climate-polluting emissions, a lot of older buildings have continued to improve energy efficiency – driven primarily by steady reductions in electricity use.

Since 2014, electricity use for buildings reporting complete data for all six years (2014 to 2019) has decreased almost 9% in total. But at the same time, fossil fuel use in the same buildings has increased slightly – on-site fossil gas and district steam use (which is generated from fossil gas) increased 1.4% from 2014 to 2019. Since Seattle’s electricity generation has almost no associated greenhouse gas emissions, the substantial savings in electricity use translated to little emissions reductions for these buildings.

In Seattle, fossil gas has about twelve times the amount of carbon emissions per unit of energy than electricity. As a result, from 2014 to 2019, total emissions from existing buildings increased even as total energy use decreased substantially. This highlights the need for more concerted efforts to reduce fossil gas use in existing buildings in addition to the new energy code updates for new buildings and Seattle’s other building policies.

Building Emissions are Distributed Across a Range of Building Types

For these benchmarked buildings, greenhouse gas emissions are spread across a wide range of different types of buildings, shown below. Hospitals, labs, grocery stores, and hotels tend to have the most emissions per building, but we have fewer of them. Multifamily (over 20,000 SF) and office buildings have a much smaller emissions footprint per building but make up a similar amount of total greenhouse gas emissions as these other types because we have a lot more of these buildings.

GHG emissions by building type (click to enlarge)

To help transition existing commercial and multifamily buildings off fossil-fuels and onto clean electricity to meet our climate goals, the City is exploring greenhouse gas emissions targets for larger buildings – paired with equity-centered support and incentive programs. To achieve the goals of the Climate Action Plan, Seattle’s emissions reductions rate needs to increase substantially. Find out how an emissions targets can help on our Building Performance Standards page.

To learn more about the Benchmarking program and how we use this data, see our new Benchmarking website.

Explore individual building reports on our Benchmarking map and reports site.

2019 Building Performance Data Published

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The City of Seattle recently published 2019 building energy performance data for Seattle’s largest commercial and multifamily properties. The data is available to view in Seattle’s Open Data Portal along with 2015 – 2018 building performance data. All five years of data can be downloaded and include energy performance metrics such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy use per square foot (EUI), ENERGY STAR score, building type, size, and more. Explore the building data here or summary statistics by building type here. Customized building reports for 2019 data will be available in early 2021 through our online mapping tool www.seattle.gov/energybenchmarkingmap.

Benchmarking Enforcement Action Delayed for Non-Compliant Buildings

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In response to the ongoing pandemic, owners will have until 1/1/2021 before enforcement action is pursued. At that time, owners that remain non-compliant with SMC 22.920 will be subject to 2nd quarter fines based on building size. See the Energy Benchmarking enforcement page for more information. 

If you need help complying or have questions about benchmarking, contact he help desk at energybenchmarking@seattle.gov or 206-727-8484.

Check Your Compliance Status for 2019 Reporting

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The online compliance portal for Energy Benchmarking is now available to check compliance for 2019 benchmarking reports. Once you have completed the Annual Update Checklist, you can check your building’s compliance status at the Seattle Energy Benchmarking Compliance Portal. To check your status, you will need your Seattle OSE Building ID or Portfolio Manager User Name.  Reports with possible errors will require additional verification to be considered compliant.

More information on data accuracy requirements here. 

If you need help complying or have questions about benchmarking, contact he help desk at energybenchmarking@seattle.gov or 206-727-8484.

2019 Energy Benchmark Reports Due July 1

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The City of Seattle has extended the annual deadline for
benchmarking and reporting of 2019 data to July 1st, 2020.
Building owners of nonresidential and multifamily buildings 20,000
SF or larger are encouraged to use the additional time to review
their Portfolio Manager accounts, update space use details to
accurately reflect recent building uses, and confirm all tenant and
house utility meters are included.

Starting in mid-March, you can check your building’s compliance
status online via the Seattle Benchmarking Compliance Portal.