Sean Denniston
2025 Fitch Mid-Career Fellow
Building Performance Standards and Historic Preservation: A Policy Toolkit
Sustainability tools within the building sector have traditionally focused on new construction, yet new construction and major renovations represent only two percent of the overall building stock in any given year. Given that almost a third of annual carbon emissions comes from operational energy consumption from the built environment, a new wave of policy tools, known as building performance standards (BPS), are starting to become more widespread in jurisdictions across the United States. BPSs set minimum performance standards – that often get more stringent over time – for all or part of the building stock. Since their requirements are triggered by compliance deadlines rather than construction events, they can have a much greater impact on existing buildings. Thirteen cities and states have adopted a BPS as of 2024, with almost three times as many committing to future adoption.
The question remains as to what impact BPSs can have on historic buildings. Without appropriate accommodations for historic buildings, BPSs could require changes that compromise historic character or even conflict with existing preservation regulations. BPSs that have been adopted so far have been inconsistent in their treatment of historic buildings. Their approaches vary from complete silence on historic buildings, to full exemptions, to accommodations that exclude preservation authorities.
This project will create a “historic building toolkit” for policymakers developing and implementing BPSs. The toolkit will include policy recommendations in two main areas of focus: emphasizing the ways in which sustainability objectives of BPSs align with those of historic preservation; and recommending policies or model language that ensures historic buildings have reasonable accommodations within the BPS. Through survey of existing policies, continued research on embodied carbon benefits of building reuse, and development of model language, this project has the potential to influence the shape of a new sustainability tool for the built environment in a way that both benefits and augments historic preservation goals at a key moment in the broader adoption of Building Performance Standards in the policy landscape.
Image: Petr Kratochvil: CC0 Public Domain