Harvard economist Robert Stavins recently published a study assessing the impact of energy disclosure laws requiring real estate owners to perform periodic energy analysis on their buildings. As Boston considers passing its own energy benchmarking ordinance, Stavins studied other existing programs and concluded that “there is currently no real evidence that these mandatory programs lead to any changes whatsoever in energy use.”
Then we read the fine print. The study, funded by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, was neither peer-reviewed nor academically published. Oh boy.
So let’s take a step back and consider the following timeframes.
New York City’s and San Francisco’s energy benchmarking programs only went live requiring reporting a year ago; Seattle, Philadelphia and Austin have started within the last year; and Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis just launched in the last few months. Which means Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission is actually late to the party in pushing to get this new policy passed.
To convince a building owner to implement an energy efficiency upgrade often takes an average of twelve months. Then we install the project a few months later. Then the savings need to materialize and be measured. A utility study that independently measured results could probably be delivered a year after that — then it could be given to Professor Stavin’s team so they could draw their own conclusions.
Get the picture? It takes at least a few years for this sort of adoption to be fully measurable.
Related: Home energy bill receives setback in Arizona Senate committee
