Compliance for Multi-family Buildings.

Probably not. The 50,000 sq ft ceiling applies to the commercial portion of the building, not to the building as a whole — and the residential portion has no ceiling at all. Commerce’s example is a 90,000 sq ft building with 60,000 sq ft residential and 30,000 sq ft office. It’s Tier 2, because the commercial space is under 50,000 sq ft. The 60,000 sq ft of residential doesn’t tip it over, because multi-family has no upper limit.

The owners’ association — where condominium structures are subject to the standard, “building owner” means the association. The square footage works differently too: individually owned residential units are not subject to the standard, and their floor area isn’t counted at all. Only common space and commercial space count. Commerce’s own example is a tower with 450,000 sq ft of gross floor area and 48,000 sq ft of common space, where 48,000 is the operative number.

Setting your building up in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and feeding it twelve consecutive months of whole-building energy data. Portfolio Manager calculates your weather-normalized energy use intensity — total energy divided by gross floor area, in kBtu per square foot per year. You then share the property with Commerce read-only, and the Clean Buildings Portal pulls the numbers through as Form C. Each covered building needs its own Portfolio Manager ID, and Commerce recommends a generic organizational account so the login survives staff turnover.

You don’t collect resident bills. Under RCW 19.27A.170, an electric or gas utility must provide energy consumption data or aggregated monthly data on the owner’s request for any covered building with tenants — without requiring prior tenant consent. On written authorization, a qualifying utility must upload that data directly to Portfolio Manager; a voluntarily participating utility may upload it, but must at minimum give you the monthly data you need to benchmark.

It’s a living document the owner reviews and signs every year. It names an energy manager — which can be you — and records your energy use in Portfolio Manager, your EUI target, and an annual comparison against it. It also documents changes in occupancy, operating hours and equipment; how you tell residents about efficient energy use; a training plan for maintenance staff; a capital plan for replacing failed equipment with ENERGY STAR rated models; and a contact list. The O&M program sits inside it. You’re excepted from the lighting schedule and lighting satisfaction survey the standard otherwise requires.

Every system that uses energy — building envelope, HVAC, domestic hot water, refrigeration, lighting, controls, and power distribution. For each, you inventory the components, set a preventive maintenance schedule and task list, and define what unacceptable performance looks like so problems get caught. The plan names who performs each task and who authorizes it, and keeps records proving it’s running. If two consecutive inspections find the same problem, you have to investigate the cause. Existing maintenance procedures can usually be updated to meet this rather than written from scratch, and Commerce publishes a development tool for building the inventory and task lists.

Yes. A group of covered buildings — or covered plus non-covered — can file a single application, with one Energy Management Plan and one O&M program. Notify Commerce at least 180 days before the group’s earliest compliance date. Individually metered buildings are better filed on their own, and exemptions always apply at the building level, never the group level. Where buildings share meters, energy data is reported at the connected-building level.

The base incentive is $0.30 per square foot of gross floor area, excluding parking, unconditioned and semi-conditioned space. The multi-family enhanced rate is $0.75 per square foot or your estimated compliance cost, whichever is lower, never below $0.30, and it requires a signed Anti-Displacement Agreement. The two don’t stack — the enhanced rate replaces the base rate rather than adding to it. Some outreach material has described it as an “additional” $0.75; the program guidebook and the Commerce program page both govern, and both say whichever is lower.

Your utility, not Commerce. The payment is funded by a Public Utility Tax credit the utility claims back. Utilities serving more than 25,000 Washington customers are required to administer these payments; smaller ones may opt in, and those that don’t pay public utility taxes can’t participate at all. You’ll need to give yours a completed W9, and payment can be reduced or zero if that utility has exhausted its available credit — so ask your utility, or Commerce’s incentive team, before you budget around it.

Applications run July 1, 2025 to June 1, 2030, but compliance and incentive applications are both due July 1, 2027, and they’re processed first come, first served. As of July 2026, $5 million had been awarded and over $144 million remained of the $150 million allocated.

No. State law prohibits it, provided tenants give you access to utility usage data and physical spaces and are responsive to compliance needs. Commerce is explicit that failing to find a mutually agreeable time doesn’t count as unresponsive.

Multi-family housing carries a site energy target of 32 kBtu/ft²/yr in western Washington and 33 in the east. If your building or an addition was permitted on or after July 1, 2016, that drops by 15 percent for the qualifying floor area. You report your performance against the number — you are not required to reach it.

You report the national median site EUI that Portfolio Manager gives for your property type.

Yes. The energy manager must give building occupants access to the Energy Management Plan annually — Commerce describes the EMP as a public-facing report — and the plan must document how you inform occupants about efficient energy use.

A Qualified Energy Manager, through the Clean Buildings Portal, using a Secure Access Washington account. A QEM is an individual, not a firm — someone who has completed Commerce’s Tier 2 training and then meets any one of three routes: two years of commercial building operations or energy management experience, a supervised full-time fellowship or internship of at least six months that produced a successful compliance application, or Building Operator Certification Level I. Anyone meeting the broader Qualified Person definition also qualifies. A building owner can fill any role in the standard, so this can be you or your own staff. For buildings with multiple owners, you designate a single qualified user to prepare the application, but every owner must sign.