Making Washington’s Clean Building Standard a Floor, Not a Ceiling
OUR INSIGHT
Without a framework to isolate the data center, EV charging, and exterior lighting, the project would have been designing to a BPS target it couldn’t actually verify at the meter.
The Challenge
This 134,000 sf corporate office retrofit needed to eliminate on-site combustion and hit a strict operational EUI target, but the building's energy accounting was unusually complex. An on-site data center, EV charging infrastructure, and parking lot lighting each carry their own metering and load profiles, and lumping them into a standard model would have either inflated the apparent EUI or left the project exposed to non-compliance under the WA Clean Building Act.
Our Role
We worked alongside HOK to ensure the performance targets being set in design were achievable and verifiable under Washington State's regulatory framework, not just energy-efficient on paper. Our metering framework gave their team a clear basis for system selection decisions and a compliance pathway they could stand behind through permit and into operations.
The Result
A detailed energy model and compliance framework projecting a 42% reduction in operational energy use across the full building scope. The project is anticipated to hit 48 kBtu/sf-year against a code requirement of 53.6 kBtu/sf-year, landing 10% below the WA Clean Building Act threshold and positioning the building as a replicable model for corporate electrification on the office campus.
Services
BPS Compliance | Building Energy Modeling | Electrification | Carbon Reduction
OWNER: Confidential
CLIENT: HOK
LOCATION: Mountlake Terrace, WA
YEAR: 2022
SIZE: 134,000 sf