Mayor Mike Johnston tournaments on the roof of the Midtown Medical Office building at Intermountain Joseph Intermountain Health Hospital. March 11, 2025.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Updated March 11, 2025 to 9 Afternoon
Owners and operators of the largest denwere buildings have spent years demanding the respiratory room to meet local regulations that require them to reduce energy use.
Now it seems they will get it.
Denver Mike Johnston announced a proposal to free the rules, known as Energize Denver on Tuesday. He said he came after a few months of negotiations with owners of owners and property owners, who have long complained politics added additional economic unrest for a real estate industry that was already fighting with increasing costs and high levels of vacancies.
“This is the heart of the dense brand,” Johnston said. “We are pro-business and we are pro-Slim.”
The city is now moving to delay some of the early deadlines and to cut penalties for buildings that fail to meet standards. Here are some of the recently proposed changes:
- Large buildings currently must meet the objectives to reduce their total use of energy with deadlines in 2026 and 2030. The proposal will extend those deadlines from two years to 2028 and 2032.
- Building owners can apply for further extension to wait until a heating and cooling system requires replacement. They can also get the supplements if they face financial difficulties, such as the high levels of vacancies.
- The city plans to halve the sentences for businesses that do not respect regulations
- No building would be required to reduce its energy use by more than 42 percent, which the city said ensures that the targets are realistic and accessible
- A new deduction program will subsidize staff training programs and energy audits to help buildings find ways to reduce overall energy use.
Elizabeth Babcock, Executive Director of the Denver Climate Action Office, sustainability and resistance, will make the final decision whether to approve the changes.
One of the first laws of this kind
Denver appreciates commercial and multi-family buildings make up nearly half of the total emissions of city greenhouse gases. Adopted in 2021, Energize Denver aimed to cut those gases that heat the climate from large buildings 80 percent by 2040.
The city later adopted an even more ambitious goal, saying it would eliminate or soften local carbon emissions in 2040, placing more weight in energy efficiency regulations. These long -term goals are not changing, but the way to reach them is.
The plan to hit those targets depends on what is known as a standard of building performance. Energize Denver already searched buildings larger than 25,000 square meters to compare their general energy use, which the city publishes on a publicly accessible website.
About 3,000 buildings across the city fall into categories. The city then set unique targets for each building to reach a 30 percent landing across the portfolio by 2030.
Smaller trading buildings should match using efficient LED lighting or covering 20 percent of the total use of more renewable energy. Other compliance options are available, according to the Denver’s climate action office, durability and resistance.
Denver was one of the first cities in the United States to adopt a building performance policy. About 28 percent of large city buildings are currently meeting their energy performance objectives, from about 15 percent two years ago, said Sharon Jaye, Energize Denver policy manager for climate action, sustainability and resistance.
Even with the delays, Johnston said the city is “more committed than ever” to fulfill its greatest climate goals, for which he said we are essential to ensure a high quality of life in Denver.
As the city has fallen behind the pace to meet its ambitious climate 2040 objective, he said its administration is looking for ways to make a lost ground.
The city faced a lot of pressure
Johnston made the announcement at the Midtown Medical Office building, part of a medical complex in the Uptown neighborhood of Denver operated by the Intermountain Saint Joseph Intermountain Hospital. Construction operators hit their 2030 targets ahead by automatically turning off the lights in careless spaces and slowing the climate control systems at night, said Simhai Natan, an energy engineer for Intermountain Health.
“It is just a matter of understanding how we can reduce the right time of equipment, while also still meeting the requirements of comfort and ventilation and keeping all residents happy,” Natan said.
During the tournament, Johnston said that achievement proved that other buildings often do not need to make massive capital investments to meet their denver energy goals. In many cases, there are clear ways to reduce the use of energy and costs, while at the same time helping the city inch towards its climate purposes.
This is not an opinion separated by many of the owners and operators of the city buildings. Last spring, a coalition of commercial groups representing owners, real estate developers and hotels sued Denverin in the Federal Court, claiming that Energize Denver requires buildings owners to replace fossil fuel fuel systems. The lawsuit also aims at a similar standard of building performance in Colorado that requires large buildings across the country to reduce overall energy use.
Energize Denver gives the building operators a bonus to meet their goals if they receive at least 80 percent of their electricity energy needs than natural gas or other sources. Since a federal law provides the US Energy Department to regulate equipment, the claims of the Denver lawsuit exceeded its authority by nudging construction operators away from natural gas.
Denver officials said the lawsuit did not play a role in the last proposal to give construction operators more time to meet the deadlines. Johnston is also not sure if the changes would make trade groups remove their lawsuit, however.
“We would be happy for them to do it. That would be fine, but I’m not in those negotiations,” Johnston said.
The initial reaction from the environmental groups was silent.
Christine Brinker, a senior building policy manager for the southwestern energy efficiency project, said it is a reality to come unfortunate that buildings cannot reasonably comply with current regulations.
“With the hitting and increasing of Covid’s tenancy, buildings simply did not have resources to pay close attention to energy efficiency and compliance with the program.”
The groups behind the lawsuit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The city posted the proposed online rules and created forms to collect public comments. The Denver Climate Action, Sustainability and Resistance Office plans to hold a virtual session on April 1 to hear further public evidence and possibly approve the changes.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated with additional comment by Johnston and cleansing and clarifying how the reduction objectives are calculated.
