Governor Inslee's Executive Order on Energy Efficiency

Governor Jay Inslee has issued an Executive Order EO 14-04 yesterday that will mandate significant changes in how the residents and businesses of the state will obtain and use energy.  

The State Building Code Council is tasked with:

develop, and implement to the extent possible and consistent with state and federal law, a new statewide program to significantly improve the energy performance of both our public and private buildings, taking into account existing state and utility efforts. The program must accelerate the cost-effective energy efficiency retrofit of existing buildings, with a support system that provides information, consumer protection, and assistance to businesses and homeowners. The program must ensure that all new buildings are as energy-neutral as possible, with advanced envelopes, efficient appliances, on-site generation, smart controls, and other features, where practicable.

This change will affect rental property first as evident in the third bullet point:

Support vulnerable and low-income populations through weatherization assistance, setting minimum standards for rental housing energy efficiency, . . .

I fully expect that the provisions that Governor Inslee has set forth will lead to large changes in the manner in which homes are constructed and the way that remodeling is done. I also anticipate that these changes will be relatively expensive to implement.