California Adopts Voluntary Green Building Standards

The new standards raise the bar for energy efficiency: to meet them, commercial buildings must use 15%–30% less energy, depending on building type, than a comparable building built to California’s already stringent code. These buildings must also meet 1% of their total energy use with onsite renewable generation. Residential buildings must meet energy code requirements and include air-sealing measures defined in the legislation.

New buildings designed to meet the voluntary standards must also demonstrate 20% savings in indoor potable water use compared with current code requirements. The residential standards limit the use of multiple showerheads in a single shower, making them among the earlier codes to regulate this loophole that circumvents federal limits on showerhead flow rates (see