February 20, 2019 -- Furthering his commitment to energy conservation and sustainability throughout Westchester, County Executive George Latimer has proposed the Westchester County Energy Benchmarking Policy. The policy would enable the County to apply for clean energy project grants from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), in order to build more cost-effective, environmentally-friendly municipal buildings. This is the first time Westchester County would be collecting, reporting and sharing building energy data among municipal officials and the public, in order to make smarter, greener decisions about our buildings and energy use.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer said: “Buildings are the single largest user of energy in Westchester County. Typically, our poorest performing buildings are using several times the amount of energy as our highest performing buildings – for the exact same building use. Adopting the Energy Benchmarking Policy will allow us to research and compare our municipal buildings’ performance to similar buildings nationwide, and use that information to make continuous improvements towards energy efficiency.”
Westchester County Director of Energy Conservation and Sustainability Pete McCartt said: “This administration is taking an aggressive path to minimize our greenhouse gas emissions and the first step on that path is to assess where we are with our energy usage, good and bad. Even though we are one of the greenest counties in the state and have many initiatives in process including our newly formed Climate Crisis Task Force, we can’t set a comprehensive plan to be even better without knowing exactly where to direct our finite resources.”
In order to become eligible for certain clean energy funds from NYSERDA, Westchester County needed to meet specific requirements under its Clean Energy Communities Program. The enactment of the Westchester County Energy Benchmarking Policy is another one of those requirements.
If approved by the Westchester County Board of Legislators, the Act would go into effect immediately.