Two policy review processes underway in Alexandria will have significant effects on the city’s built environment.
The Housing 2040 Master Plan will extensively update the city’s 2014 housing master plan. Early indications suggest that Housing 2040 may be particularly meaningful to the 58% of Alexandrians who are tenants because renter protections are a key component of the new master plan.
The city’s 2019 Green Building Policy is also being revised. The standards for green buildings and energy efficiency are important to developers who bear the expense of constructing housing that complies with the Green Building Policy and to residents who will pay the continuing energy costs of living in those buildings.
Many of the goals of Housing 2040 are aspirational, or values-based. For example, one of Housing 2040’s ten draft goals is, “Enhance housing quality, safety, and livability to support resident security, health and wellbeing.”
The Green Building Policy, which is expected to come to the City Council for a final review and approval this year, also contains values-based goals. However, it also departs in a significant way from prior approaches by moving from requiring LEED certification, a building energy efficiency standard that involves multiple aspects of sustainability, to a single metric on building performance: Energy Use Intensity.
A building’s EUI is the amount of kBTUs per square foot per year the building uses. BTU stands for British thermal units. Each BTU equals the amount of heat needed to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. The prefix “k” stands for 1,000, so a kBTU equals 1,000 BTUs.
EUI, then, is a standard analogous to miles per gallon for cars with a key difference: higher MPG signifies better energy efficiency for cars, while lower EUI signifies better energy efficiency for buildings. Energy efficient buildings are well-sealed and insulated.
While both developers and climate activists generally approve of the move to EUI, the actual EUI number to be assigned in the new Green Building Policy to multifamily buildings is hotly debated. Building codes allow a maximum EUI of 45. The current draft Green Building Policy specifies an EUI of 38 or lower for multi-unit residential buildings and 31 or lower for single-unit residences.
Climate and energy efficiency activists argue that to fulfill Alexandria’s Eco-City goals, and the city’s 2019 Declaration of Climate Emergency which contains a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, the EUI standard for new buildings should be 25 or lower. This, they argue, would be consistent with EUI standards in other jurisdictions, notably New York City, Philadelphia, and the District of Columbia.
Who incurs costs, and when those costs are incurred, is important in the EUI debate. The cost of building housing units that exceed the energy efficiency standards of the past is paid by builders and developers. The energy cost of living in those units is paid by homeowners or passed through to tenants by landlords as rent. Thus, affordable housing advocates argue for more stringent (numerically lower) EUI standards as a way of reducing housing costs.
Developers and builder argue that as businesses accountable to their owners they should not be compelled to unduly subsidize public policy goals, no matter how laudable. The standards applicable in other housing markets are of little consequence, they might argue, because each market and project presents different profitability possibilities.
The business model of developers and builders also effects the EUI debate. When to cash out of a project is a critical decision for developers. Energy costs matter to a developer that builds and owns property, but not to a developer that builds and sells immediately. The decision to cash out is affected by market conditions, access to capital, and other factors.
If a developer or builder sells a project upon completion then the continuing occupancy costs, including those related to energy, are of little concern because those costs will be paid by others. Developers that build and sell see EUI as, at best, a cost of doing business.
This space-constrained summary of the Green Building Policy debate over EUI is a high-level preview. The coming debate will be important and worth watching.
The writer is a former lawyer, member of the Alexandria School Board from 1997 to 2006, and English teacher from 2007 to 2021 at T.C. Williams High School, now Alexandria City High School. He can be reached at aboutalexandria@gmail.com and free subscriptions to his newsletter are available at https://aboutalexandria.substack.com.
Thanks for reading About Alexandria!
Subscribe for free to receive new posts.
.
I think we attain energy efficiency mainly when the workers, particularly the top officers, at utility companies, have their pay determined in part by efficiency gains.
Perhaps another way this debate progresses is when insurance rates affect the landlords and developers. As Alexandria joins the rest of the world in getting hotter, with wilder swings in temperature and humidity and more weather extremes, insurance rates will rise. When flooding and wild fires caused by the extremes results in financial costs to those developers and landlords they will wish they had provided lower EUIs to their buildings.
Bottom line: when you can’t afford insurance on a mortgage you have to pay off your mortgage all at once. Coastal areas are now seeing insurance rates higher than mortgages so they rely on state funded insurance as a last resort. When a major extreme weather event like a hurricane hits, the payout of insurance will bankrupt the state. Who will bail it out then? Result: no more last resort state supported insurance and all the loans are demanded to be paid off. Properties are abandoned and we see another financial crisis. This is not hyperbolic - it’s just closer than you think.