Board of Supervisors Actions - Green Building

August 20, 2002 - The Board of Supervisors approved a Resolution committing the county to participate in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives Climate Protection Campaign to set a target to reduce the county's internal operations greenhouse gas emissions (ghg) by 20% of year 2000 baseline levels to approximately 30,000 tons per year by the year 2010.

September 27, 2005 – The Board of Supervisors, along with all other local jurisdictions in the County, committed to a community-wide goal of a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from our 1990 baseline levels by the year 2015.
September 12th, 2006 - The Board of Supervisors approved the Climate Protection Action Plan as the road map to create these reductions.

July 8, 2008 - The Board of Supervisors approved development of Regional Climate Protection Coordination Plan.

November 4, 2008 - The Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution selecting the Build-It-Green, green point rating system for new residential construction, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Commercial Green Building System for new non-residential construction, along with their respective Green Point Checklist, and directed staff to develop a green building ordinance based on these guidelines.

July 21, 2009 - The Board of Supervisors held a public hearing, approved the Green Building Ordinance, Energy Efficiency Ordinance and Energy Cost Effective Study.  Application to the California Energy Commission for approval was submitted immediately thereafter.

November 3, 2009 - The Board of Supervisors re-opened the public hearing on the Green Building Ordinance due to changes requested by the California Energy Commission (CEC). These changes were non substantive in that they simply required Sonoma County to state in the ordinance that compliance with green building rating systems would not result in the failure to demonstrate compliance with the California Building Energy Efficiency Standards (Title 24, part 6) of the California Building Code for the building in effect at the time the building permit was issued. The Board approved this amended ordinance and approved a Resolution Adopting Guidelines, Rating Systems and Compliance Thresholds for the Sonoma County Green Building Program. The California Energy Commission (CEC) approved the Green Building Ordinance on December 16, 2009.

January 26, 2010 – The Board of Supervisors adopted the Green Building Ordinance and Energy Efficiency Ordinance.  The Green Building and Energy Efficiency Ordinance became effective March 1, 2010.

October 19, 2010 – The Board of Supervisors introduced an ordinance to provide for all local amendments to the model codes as part of the triennial code adoption process.  These codes include: California Building Code; California Mechanical Code; California Plumbing Code; California Energy Code; California Electrical Code; California Fire Code; California Administrative Code; California Referenced Standards Code; and two new codes, the California Residential Code and California Green Building Standards Code, also known as “CalGreen”.  With the adoption by the State of CalGreen, the county is mandated to adopt this code.  The proposed code amendment included amending the current green building ordinance and energy efficiency ordinance to replace the Build-It-Green and LEED green point rated systems with CalGreen, otherwise the county would have two separate sets of regulations regarding green building.  Maintaining separate local and state green building regulations would be confusing and difficult, if not impossible to implement. 

November 2, 2010 – The Board of Supervisors held a public hearing and subsequently adopted local amendments to the model codes, adding, with amendments, the new California Residential Code, and California Green Building Standards Code.  CalGreen was amended to add the voluntary Tier 1 provisions as a mandatory requirement, as this was determined to be equal to or exceeding the previous requirements for green building. By this action, a single green building program (CalGreen) is adopted, and the green point rated systems by Build-It-Green for residential construction and LEED for non-residential previously used, will no longer apply.