History of the Palo Alto Green Building Program
The Goal of the Palo Alto Green Building Program is to design, build and operate a new generation of efficient, environmentally responsible, and healthy buildings in the City of Palo Alto. The City believes that the practice of green building can have a significant impact on reducing energy, water and natural resource consumption, and improve Palo Alto citizens' well being through improved indoor air quality and comfort. Green building is the practice of taking an integrated approach to building construction, building systems, and building sites to provide more environmentally responsive, healthy, productive, economical places to work, learn and live. Green building also goes beyond the physical buildings to consider how the site and buildings interact with the community and transportation infrastructure. We thank you for your participation in this important endeavor.
The Palo Alto Green Building Program seeks to address multiple city ordinances, plans and goals. For the past three years the City Council has ranked environmental protection in it's top three annual goals. In June of 2008, the City of Palo Alto passed a mandatory Green Building Ordinance, which added Chapter 18.44 to the Palo Alto Municipal Code. The new ordinance required specific project types to meet minimum thresholds of compliance, and verification using the appropriate USGBC LEED or Build It Green (BIG) Green Point Rated (GPR) green building rating systems. The City Council concurrently passed a complimentary new ordinance which added chapter 16.18 to the Palo Alto Municipal Code establishing local energy efficiency standards based on the 2005 California Energy Code. The ordinance required primarily new construction projects to exceed Title 24, Part 6 of the California Energy Code by 15%. Current efforts are underway to update this ordinance to reflect the new 2008 California Energy Code. The Green Building Ordinance became effective in July 2008 and was retroactive for projects for which planning applications were submitted after December 3, 2007.
With the release of the California Green Building Code (CALGreen) in the Fall of 2010, the City moved it’s green building regulations from its zoning regulations (Title 18) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code (PAMC) to its building regulations (Title 16). The new regulations adopt CALGreen with local amendments intending to expand the types of projects covered by CALGreen and to incorporate complimentary local ordinance requirements. The Ordinance can be downloaded below, and also found in PAMC Chapter 16.14.
The Green Building Program also includes promoting the City's Climate Protection Plan (CPP) and Zero Waste goals. In 2007, the City Council approved the Climate Protection Plan (CPP) that provided direction to reduce green house gas emissions associated with buildings as one method to reduce Palo Alto's impact on climate change. The plan proposed implementing specific requirements for green building and adopting the 2005 California Energy Code to achieve emission reduction goals. The goal of Zero Waste is to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills by 90% or more. As part of the Green Building Program all demolitions and projects greater than $25,000 in valuation are required to divert debris from landfill.
The Green Building Program which includes all of these requirements, goals and plans, includes helpful information on what level of performance a project is subject to, what the submittal requirements are, how projects are reviewed, what financial incentives are available and resources and training to help along the way.
Ordinances, Plans and Programs
Current
Archived
Program Performance
The green building program has received over 350 applications since it began in July of 2008. 2/3 of the applications received were residential and 1/3 of the applications were nonresidential. The program so far has influenced $8,306,638 and 98,275 square feet of construction to be “green”. The City has over 10 LEED registered projects and over 35 GreenPoint Rated projects under construction. The projects that successfully completed construction and the green building program:
- include 750 employees in Palo Alto;
- achieved on average 24% energy efficiency savings;
- reduced indoor water use by 69,500 gallons per year;
- reduced outdoor water use by 50,000 gallons per year;
- expended $635,174 on environmentally preferable building materials;
- diverted 704.98 tons of waste from landfill; and
- reduced CO2 emissions by over 200 tons;
Last Updated: May 3, 2012
