Codes, Standards & Labels
Green labels, codes and standards drive energy and water savings, reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and lead to healthier, more resilient communities.
Featured Project
Home Energy Score
Like a miles-per-gallon rating for a car, Home Energy Score provides comparable and credible information about a single-family home’s energy use. A Home Energy Score report helps people make better home buying and home improvement decisions.
Low-scoring homes are referred to BayREN's free Home Upgrade Advisor service, which helps homeowners participate in local rebate and financing programs.
Home Energy Score was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy. StopWaste is the official Home Energy Score partner managing the program in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
Home Energy Score - San Francisco Bay Area milestones (as of June 2018):
- Homes scored: +1,900
- Home Energy Score assessors trained: 59
- Average home score: 4 (on a scale of 1 to 10)
- BayREN Home Upgrade incentives paid: 849 rebates.
Green Building Codes & Labels
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GreenPoint Rated is the leading residential home rating system in California. The GreenPoint Rated website includes a Green Product Directory. |
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LEED, the most widely used green building rating system in the world, is available for most building, community and home project types. LEED offers a streamlined documentation process for projects built in California, because they are already required to comply with CALGreen, the state's green building code.
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CALGreen, the State of California's mandatory green building code, requires new and renovated homes to meet minimum green building standards. |
Sustainable Landscape Codes & Labels
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ReScape Rated Landscapes is Northern California's leading rating system for water-conserving, environmentally sound landscapes. Originally developed by StopWaste and known as Bay-Friendly Rated Landscapes, this program is now managed by ReScape California. |
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The Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (WELO) is a statewide water conservation law for new and renovated landscapes. |
Publication Spotlight
A study by researchers at UC Berkeley and UCLA found that homes in California labeled with Energy Star, GreenPoint Rated or LEED sell for a premium of nine percent compared to comparable, non-labeled homes. This is the first rigorous, large-scale independent economic analysis of the value of green home labels in California.
Read all about how we put our green building and Bay-Friendly Landscaping know-how to work when we renovated an old building in Oakland to create a healthy, energy efficient new office. The project was the first renovated building in the country to earn LEED Platinum certification, the highest rating in the LEED Green Building Rating System.