IMT Model Building Performance Standard Ordinance

The Institute for Market Transformation’s (IMT) model ordinance for a building performance standard (BPS) benefits from lessons learned from the four jurisdictions (District of Columbia, New York City, St. Louis, and the state of Washington) that had adopted building performance standards as of January 2021. As a model ordinance, its intended purpose is to provide the structural foundation for a strong BPS ordinance in any jurisdiction. Its language is meant to be modified as necessary to reflect local circumstances and policy priorities.

The IMT BPS model ordinance calls for the government department implementing the ordinance to sort covered buildings into groups according to property type (e.g., office, retail, restaurants, and grocery stores). For each property type, the department sets an ambitious but achievable final performance standard that each property must meet by a specified future date. In the ordinance, IMT recommends setting final performance standards 15-30+ years in the future. This long timeframe will allow almost all buildings to encounter at least one opportunity to make a capital investment to dramatically improve performance, such as replacing a roof or HVAC system. To ensure that buildings make progress toward the final performance standard, the ordinance also creates interim performance standards that they must meet at five-year intervals.

A year later, IMT published companion documents to their BPS model ordinance. In IMT’s BPS Implementation Guide, IMT recommends strategies, processes, and rules that local and state jurisdictions can use to implement equitable BPS policies. And in a revised Short Model BPS, IMT caters to governments seeking a more streamlined version of their 2021 Model. The Short Model BPS establishes broad goals and an equitable process by which stakeholders and one or more agencies will work together after passage to craft BPS rules to achieve shared goals. The streamlined law, and its greater reliance on rulemaking, make it particularly well-suited for states passing a BPS. Both these documents are also available below.