Through the Cambridge Building Energy Retrofit Program, the City of Cambridge and Eversource have partnered to make it easy for large building owners, operators, and tenants to reduce their energy use and carbon emissions and save money. The Building Energy Retrofit Consultant will help building owners, operators, and tenants find the best solutions for your building by helping you understand, access, and implement Eversource’s expertise, energy efficiency services and incentives.
The City aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, requiring aggressive levels of energy savings, outlined in the Cambridge Net Zero Action Plan. To address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from buildings, which are responsible for 80% of the City’s total GHG emissions, the City adopted the Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO) in 2014 to collect energy-related data from commercial and institutional buildings greater than 25,000 square feet and from residential buildings with over 50 units per parcel. Combined, BEUDO-reporting parcels are responsible for over 70% of Cambridge GHG emissions from buildings. The City's Net Zero Action Plan also suggests several actions to support energy reductions in large buildings in the City, including amending BEUDO to incorporate performance requirements, and implementing a voluntary comprehensive retrofit program.
To achieve the goals of its Net Zero Action Plan and to assist buildings subject to BEUDO to take steps to significantly reduce their energy use, the City conducted policy research, quantitative analysis, and stakeholder engagement to inform the development of a voluntary Building Energy Retrofit Program. Eversource and BEUDO stakeholders were important partners in this process to determine needs and opportunities to help building owners subject to BEUDO requirements best utilize Eversource and other state or utility programs to achieve deeper and comprehensive energy retrofits. These retrofits can help BEUDO building owners meet and exceed potential BEUDO performance requirements and enable the deep carbon savings necessary to meet the City’s climate mitigation goals.
Property Assessment Clean Energy (PACE) is a financing mechanism to allow commercial property owners to finance energy improvements for new construction and existing buildings over a long term. It can be used for commercial, industrial and multi-family (5+units with a single owner) buildings.