On Tuesday, December 2nd, the Fort Collins City Council will consider approval of a Building Performance Standards (BPS) ordinance that would require existing commercial buildings having areas less than 50,000 square feet to meet specific energy use targets. The ordinance proposed by city staff is very weak and will do little to help our community achieve its 2030 climate pollution reduction goal. Let council know that you want them to approve a strengthened version of the ordinance on Tuesday. Background information and talking points follow:

Background:

  1. Council and staff have been discussing adoption of a BPS ordinance for the last two years. Much of the focus of the discussion has been on the costs of meeting the energy targets. Very little attention has been given to the financial benefits of meeting the targets.
  2. BPS is an important lever for achieving our community’s climate pollution reduction goal of 80% below 2005 levels by 2030. According to city staff, BPS can reduce those pollution levels by three percentage points.
  3. The State of Colorado adopted BPS legislation in 2021, and requires compliance by 2030. This legislation applies to buildings having areas of more than 50,000 square feet throughout Colorado, including in Fort Collins.
  4. The City of Denver adopted a BPS ordinance in 2021 and requires compliance by 2030.
  5. The City of Boulder adopted a BPS ordinance in 2015 and requires compliance by 2027.
  6. The proposed Fort Collins BPS ordinance pushes the compliance deadline to 2035, exempts buildings between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet, and exempts apartment buildings from the need to comply.
  7. The proposed Fort Collins BPS ordinance also proposes spending $$6.25 million from the voter-approved sales tax to support climate programs (21% of the total) by 2032 to incentivize businesses to comply “early” with the BPS targets.
  8. The Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to City Council opposing the proposed BPS ordinance, which is available here. The Chamber is happy to accept the incentive payments, though. It is important to note that the Chamber has opposed most, if not all, important initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, including the adoption of the City’s ambitious climate goals in 2015 and adoption of the 100% renewable electricity goal in 2018.
  9. More information on the proposed BPS ordinance is available on the FCSG website here. To view the BPS agenda item for the City Council meeting on 12/2/2025, see page 1099 of 1163 in the agenda packet for that meeting.

Talking Points:

  1. Fort Collins City staff has consistently failed to emphasize the financial benefits of a BPS ordinance since its first formal presentation to council in April of 2024. This has allowed opponents of BPS to push back based solely on the costs of compliance.
  2. City staff has also failed to emphasize or even mention the availability of state-sanctioned financing mechanisms to “bring the savings forward” and allow businesses to comply with BPS requirements without so much as a down payment. Those financing mechanisms include the “Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy” (C-PACE) program and energy performance contracting.
  3. The compliance deadline should be moved up from 2035 to 2030. The City of Boulder requires compliance with its BPS ordinance by 2027. The City of Denver and the State of Colorado require compliance with their BPS laws by 2030. Fort Collins cannot claim any “leadership” in the climate policy arena and would in fact be a climate policy laggard if it postpones the BPS compliance deadline to 2035.
  4. Fort Collins will almost certainly fail to meet its 2030 climate pollution reduction goal if it postpones the BPS compliance deadline to 2035.
  5. Apartment buildings should not be exempted from the City’s BPS ordinance. Doing so would make rents less affordable rather than more affordable, as apartment building owners pass along higher-than-necessary energy costs to tenants without taking advantage of C-PACE or energy performance contracting.
  6. No incentive payments should be made to businesses from the climate sales tax to help them comply with BPS requirements after 2030. The climate sales tax was approved for the purpose of helping Fort Collins meet its climate pollution reduction goals. Those funds should not be used unless they actually move us toward achieving the 2030 goal.
  7. The City of Fort Collins declared a climate emergency in 2019. If this declaration is to be taken seriously, we need to move quickly toward meeting our climate goals, not to delaying or giving up on them entirely.

Please plan to come to the City Council meeting at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 2nd to support passage of a strong BPS ordinance. You will need to register here in order to speak to council.

If you can’t make it to the council meeting, please send comments to councilmembers based on the above talking points via CityCouncil@fcgov.com. You can use the following message as a starting point:

Dear Members of Council –

Please approve a strong Building Performance Standards ordinance at your meeting on December 2nd.  Please do not extend the compliance deadline past 2030. Doing so would make it very unlikely that we will meet our 2030 climate pollution reduction goal.

Also, please do not exempt apartment buildings from the BPS ordinance. We need to start looking at energy efficiency as a way to improve affordability and stop focusing only on upfront costs. Those upfront costs can be eliminated, in any case, via C-PACE and energy performance contracting.

Thank you!