The youngest SF Mayor in we can’t remember how long.

San Francisco pulled into the lead for most progressive energy policy last week when Mayor Gavin Newsom (at 42, the youngest San Francisco mayor in over a century) submitted his nine-months-in-the-making proposed legislation on existing commercial buildings to the city’s Board of Supervisors.

The proposed legislation would require the owners of commercial buildings over 5,000 square feet to conduct an energy-efficiency audit every five years, and to supply annual updates – all of which would be available in a public database, according to the SF Gate.

And guess what? These required audits would come back with helpful suggestions on how to increase the property’s energy efficiency, say by sealing windows, or upgrading the HVAC system. Kind of like what BuildingAdvice does. Tenants would also have access to an estimate of resulting energy savings from taking those steps, the cost of implementing them, and their economic value.

In a post on City Insider, an SF Gate blog on “the people, politics and places of San Francisco,” John Coté wrote that Newsom likened the commercial building audits to fuel efficiency ratings listed on car windows at an auto dealership.

The local branch of the Building Owners and Managers Association (part of nationwide BOMA), the commercial real estate industry’s heavy-hitting advocacy group, supports the legislation, although there are still skeptics in the business community, the mayor said. Berkeley, Sonoma County, Palm Desert and Boulder, Colo. have similar programs going.  Once approved, the legislation sets a staggered, three-year schedule for compliance, starting in April.

(This article re-blogged from http://airadvice.com/buildingblog/?p=1059)