Title
An Ordinance to Add Chapter 102 (Home Energy Rating Disclosure) to Title VIII (Building Regulations) of the Code of the City of Ann Arbor (ORD-23-26)
Memorandum
In November 2019, Ann Arbor City Council unanimously adopted a Climate Emergency Declaration committing to charting a path for how the entire Ann Arbor community could achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2030. In June 2020, City Council unanimously adopted the A2ZERO Carbon Neutrality Plan, a document created with input from thousands of Ann Arborites to lay out seven strategies for our community to achieve carbon neutrality.
The A2ZERO Plan seeks to ensure that buildings in Ann Arbor-which account for 65% of total community-wide greenhouse gas emissions-are as energy and water efficient as possible. The Office of Sustainability & Innovations continues to advance initiatives to reduce building-related carbon emissions. The latest initiative focuses on single family residential homes.
The current home buying process in Ann Arbor leaves prospective buyers largely in the dark in regard to the specific energy consumption data of the homes available on the market. This is due in part to the fact that, in Ann Arbor, there is not yet a standardized means of collecting and relaying a home's energy consumption data. Furthermore, the process of obtaining or sharing such data is purely voluntary, so many sellers are either unaware or choose to forego making the information available. However, the need exists for Ann Arbor to make residential energy consumption easily accessible to home buyers through a Home Energy Rating Disclosure ("HERD"), as well as the tools and resources to make it happen.
According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), 25% of all U.S. households face a high energy burden (>6% income goes to energy bills) and 13% of households face a severe energy burden (>10% income to energy bills). These numbers are drastically and disproportionately higher for low-in...
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