Green Building Program

Prior to the adoption of the new California Green Building Standards Code (CalGreen) by the Board of Supervisors on November 2, 2010, Sonoma County’s original Green Building Ordinance was adopted by the Board of Supervisors on January 26, 2010.  The County’s green building program based new residential construction compliance on the 2008 Build-It-Green (BIG) green point rated system with a compliance threshold of 50 BIG points.  New non-residential construction was based on the 2009 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), with a compliance threshold of 40 “equivalent” LEED points.  LEED certification was not required.   New residential construction was required to exceed California Energy Code requirements by 15 percent, but this was not required for new non-residential construction.
                                                          
CalGreen became effective January 1, 2011.  It is composed of certain mandatory measures and two tiers of voluntary measures for new residential and non-residential construction. Local agencies had the option of adopting these voluntary measures as mandatory requirements at the local level. CalGreen has similar provisions to both BIG & LEED, though it is in a slightly different format and a direct comparison is difficult. Nonetheless, the goal in reviewing and adopting the new code was to ensure that Sonoma County’s strong commitment to green building as demonstrated through the January 2010 code adoption process was not eroded. The adoption of the statewide CalGreen code also presented a unique opportunity to provide a green building program that would be consistent on a countywide basis.  Toward that end, on July 1, 2010 the Redwood Empire Association of Code Officials (REACO), through its code adoption committee, issued a position paper that identified this unique opportunity to provide for a consistent and effective regional sustainable building program.  REACO recommended that each jurisdiction adopt the CalGreen Tier 1 voluntary measures as mandatory for both residential and non-residential projects.  Further, REACO recommended that local jurisdictions no longer use the point rated systems such as BIG and LEED. 

In August, Build-It-Green released a comparison of its BIG point-rating system to CalGreen’s mandatory measures and Tier 1 and Tier 2 voluntary provisions.  This comparison showed that adopting CalGreen with mandatory Tier 1 provisions for residential construction would result in the range of 51 to 70 BIG points.  Based on this comparison, it was concluded that adoption of CalGreen with mandatory Tier 1 provisions are equivalent to the County’s current green building standards for residential construction.

The comparison of non-residential provisions in LEED to CalGreen is much more complex.  In August 2010, the Santa Rosa City Council directed its staff to research the CalGreen/LEED comparison in an effort to eliminate the point rated systems and proceed with CalGreen as the new standard.  As a result, the Santa Rosa CalGreen research team was formed to review comparison documents created by AIACC, BIG, SF Environmental, Stopwaste.org, and USGBC Northern California. Sonoma County’s Chief Building Official participated on this committee.  The committee used the professional judgment and expertise of the group to agree upon the comparable level of green building from one program to the other. The net result of this comparative analysis was that CalGreen with mandatory Tier 1 measures yielded a range between 27 and 37.5 LEED points. With an option to include the requirement of one additional elective per category, the range was between 27 and 44.5 LEED points. However, mandating one additional elective measure per category created a significant potential for inconsistencies between local jurisdictions. Ultimately, the committee, like REACO, recommended that local jurisdictions adopt mandatory Tier 1 measures for both residential and non-residential projects for the following reasons:

1. Provides the best opportunity for a simple green building program that is acceptable to most if not all local jurisdictions.  The potential for countywide uniformity provides major benefits by consistent application of green building standards in the plan check and inspection processes and creates an opportunity for REACO to provide consistent permit submittal requirements that can be used by all jurisdictions.
2. Recognizes that the California Energy Commission’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2020 and ramping up of both energy and green building codes will occur over time.
3. Adopting CalGreen Tier 1 is a positive step forward and likely more stringent than the majority of California jurisdictions will adopt.
4. Consistency in standards across jurisdictions not only benefits implementation by jurisdictions, but contractors and design professionals.

The adoption of CalGreen plus Tier 1 for non-residential construction is equivalent to the County’s previous program for two reasons. First, when the County adopted its green building program, meeting the certification level of 40 LEED points was an issue because rural areas are at a disadvantage relative to urban areas when it comes to gaining LEED points. Certain measures that earn points in urban areas, such as location on transit lines, are generally not available in rural areas. For this reason the County adopted the 40 LEED point “equivalent” threshold for new non-residential construction. This provided flexibility in design and construction so that if a project was shy of the 40 point threshold, added elements, such as LEED prerequisites, could be assigned “equivalent” points to achieve compliance. Thus, even though CalGreen plus Tier 1 may not achieve 40 LEED points, it is very similar to the 40-point “equivalent” threshold already in place as part of the County’s program. Second, CalGreen Tier 1 will exceed the County’s previous program in that it will require a 15 percent increase above Title 24 energy requirements for non-residential construction. 

The California Energy Commission had determined that although Sonoma County has been previously approved at a 15% above Title 24 for residential energy efficiency, we must re-apply to the CEC for approval under the new CalGreen.  Since we are proposing a 15% increase in energy efficiency for non-residential with Tier 1, our application to the CEC will require approval for both residential and non-residential.  Application to the CEC is currently in progress.
One major difference between the previous green building ordinance and the new CalGreen lies in the implementation of this new code.  Previously, the applicant was responsible to obtain a third party green point rater to provide verification of plans meeting the county’s requirements.  In addition, third party green point raters were required to provide inspection verification to insure green building elements approved on the plans were constructed on the project.  Now, all green building plancheck and inspection will be performed by county Building Division staff.  The only exception to this is if the applicant chooses green building electives that require expertise beyond that which the county can provide.  An example of this is duct testing which needs to be done by a qualified HERS rater.