Washington, DC 

Population: 679,000

Washington, D.C. is a rapidly growing city of just under 700,000 residents. The District has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, with an interim target of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030. To meet these ambitious targets, buildings in the District will need to transition away from fossil fuels, which accounts for roughly one-fifth of citywide GHG emissions. 

BEI worked with D.C. between 2019-2023 as part of our work with cities selected for the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge. As part of its participation in the Climate Challenge, D.C. implemented its groundbreaking Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS), took steps to accelerate a transition to more sustainable modes of transportation, and continued its efforts to electrify its buildings as part of the citywide transition away from fossil fuels. 

D.C. partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a technical roadmap for electrifying its buildings and transportation sector and to minimize impacts to its energy infrastructure. To complement this study, BEI helped the District assess the potential impacts of building electrification for its low-income communities, including impacts to public health and safety, climate resiliency, housing and energy costs, and economic development. BEI also supported the District to analyze the local economics of building electrification for common residential building typologies, including existing single-family homes, existing multifamily buildings, and multifamily new construction. As part of this analysis, BEI helped D.C. assess different building metering configurations and identify ways to increase cost-effectiveness of the upgrades—for example, by incorporating weatherization and on-site solar PV. Building in part on BEI’s customer economics analysis, in 2021 the DC Sustainable Energy Utility (DCSEU) decided to eliminate all incentives for gas appliances, ensuring utility investments strongly encourage electrification across the District. 

From 2021-2022, BEI helped D.C. staff share and refine the results of this research with a broad set of stakeholders through a series of focus groups with developers, contractors, housing advocates, and others who helped identify priority next steps to accelerate building electrification across the District. In 2022-2023, BEI then supported D.C.’s first building electrification equitable engagement pilot, which led to the creation and implementation of a community engagement process to better understand the needs and inequities of the city’s most vulnerable communities. In 2022, motivated in part by BEI’s customer economics analysis (which included new construction) and its ongoing community engagement, D.C. passed the Clean Energy DC Building Code Amendment, which requires all-electric new construction and substantial renovations for all residential buildings less than four stories high beginning in 2026. DC SEU also launched the Affordable Housing Retrofit Accelerator, which provides a "one-stop shop" of services for both subsidized and unsubsidized affordable housing that must comply with BEPS. Building on its history of launching ambitious policies and programs, its strong foundational research, and its commitment to ongoing community engagement, D.C. has the tools to enable an equitable building electrification transition throughout the D.C. community.