Colorado’s biggest buildings clash with air regulators

BY MICHAEL BOOTH THE COLORADO SUN

Dennis Supple has done the math on everything demanded by Colorado regulators writing greenhouse gas e ciency rules for big buildings, and he’s certain his LoDo o ce would be lost in the equation.

e nonpro t he manages facilities for lls much of a classy brick and plate glass ve-story building built in 1985 and recently renovated. But the proposed Air Quality Control Commission rule for cutting emissions in buildings over 50,000 square feet would hand over a long punch list of expensive mandates, Supple said.

“Every window in this building would have to be changed, the exterior walls would have to be widened,” said Supple, speaking out against the rules from his role as president of the Denver chapter of the International Facilities Management Association. e draft rule has an e ciency target number in mind for his place, “and the amount of insulation between the walls and the drywall would have to increase almost two to threefold to hit that number. It’s not a simple number to hit.” e vacancy rate in downtown Denver on o ce space is almost 24%. And then to throw this in?” e air quality commission’s hearing and vote next week on proposed Regulation 28 — continued from the spring after a furious urry of comments from owners thinking it went too far and green groups who said that wasn’t far enough — promises more heated rhetoric about climate vs. capitalism. e draft would impact more than 8,000 buildings across Colorado, seeking cuts of buildingrelated greenhouse gas emissions of 7% by 2026 and 20% by 2030. e rule’s authors and advocates say heating, cooling and lighting big buildings is the next logical large target for greenhouse gas cuts, after Colorado has spent years going after coal- red power utilities, oil and gas production, fossil fuel cars and trucks, and other industries. Large buildings are responsible for up to 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, the state says, and that’s separate from the emissions created by the utilities serving the buildings.

Total cost to comply?

“We gured it at about $6 million,” Supple said. “Yep. And that’s a $6 million outlay that no board of directors has in their budget, at this point in time, especially in downtown Denver, in a commercial building. You just don’t have an extra $6 million laying around.