Raising the Floor with BPS
The building and construction community does a lot to showcase the new, innovative flagship projects that firms and owners want to highlight. Many of these projects are exemplary and share new technologies and tactics for creating high-quality, sustainable projects. These projects raise the ceiling on performance and can be net-zero water and energy. The innovation and lessons learned from these projects are invaluable, but they cannot be replicated at scale. New construction and major renovation make up only about 2% of the U.S. building stock in any given year. This 2% raises the ceiling on performance and expectations. But we also need to consider the other 98% of the U.S. building stock that already exists. If we want to reduce carbon emissions in the building industry, we have to talk about existing structures.
A building is built to the energy code in place when it was designed. For the most part, energy codes have become stricter over time, so the older the building, the lower its baseline performance. A way to address the performance of existing buildings is through Building Performance Standards. BPS is the first mechanism built to reach that 98%, raising the floor for every building over a jurisdiction's threshold, whether the owner opted in or not. This change could have a huge impact on the building industry's energy use and carbon emissions.
That said, this rollout isn't a straight line, and I think that's worth naming honestly. Denver has pushed its interim and final targets back to 2028 and 2032, and softened penalties along the way. Colorado waived interim performance requirements for this reporting cycle. Washington, D.C.'s BEPS delays were proposed and then stripped from the final budget, so its first compliance cycle still closes this December. Boston has extended reporting deadlines more than once. None of that is a sign BPS is failing. It's what it looks like when ambitious policy meets real buildings, real budgets, and real political pressure, and mostly holds its ground anyway.
Facilities teams manage buildings they often didn't design, with real limits on what operational changes alone can achieve. Owners set the budget and priorities that shape what's possible before a building is ever built. Architects design to the standards in place at the time of design, and push further when clients prioritize it, and budgets allow it. Making BPS work depends on the whole team, not any one part. That's where the real coordination has to happen, between planning, design, and operations, for the floor to actually rise the way BPS intends.
That's the shift I'm watching closely right now, and the kind of work I want to be part of.
https://savingplaces.org/stories/building-performance-standards
https://buildinginnovationhub.org/beps-2026-dc-budget-changes/
Melissa Morancy is a strategic climate and building decarbonization consultant and founder of Lighthouse Advisory Solutions.