New Effective Date for 2013 Codes – Important Update: 2013 Energy Efficiency Code Effective Date Changed
SACRAMENTO – The California Energy Commission unanimously approved revising the effective date for the 2013 Building Energy Efficiency Standards from January 1, 2014, to July 1, 2014.
The revised effective date was approved for two reasons: 1) to enable the Energy Commission to release customized software that has a complete set of features and suite of tools that the building industry can use to comply with the 2013 Building Energy Efficiency Standards (Title 24, Part 1, Chapter 10 and Part 6, and affected provisions in Part 11 [Cal. Green Building Standards Code]); and 2) to provide the industry and local building departments more time to prepare for and become familiar with the Standards.
The open source software is the most sophisticated to date, uses new advances in building analytics and will be significantly more accurate when calculating savings.
The Energy Commission will use the additional time to provide more information on the Standards and work with California’s utilities, building industry and building departments to provide training on the software and new Standards. Implementing the Standards with software that is not fully functional puts property owners and the building industry in an untenable situation and could lead to delays in project design and permitting.
The public domain compliance software for residential buildings has been available since July 2013 and developers have been using it to comply with and exceed the new standards.
The public domain compliance software for nonresidential buildings was released in September 2013. The Energy Commission adopted the 2013 Standards on May 31, 2012, and the California Building Standards Commission approved them on January 23, 2013.
The California Building Standards Commission will consider this issue at their December 18 business meeting.
For more information:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/title24/2013standards/
