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Multifamily Buildings

Property owners and tenants: Looking for recycling requirements for multifamily buildings? Go to Recycling Rules Alameda County.

In California, there are more than 3 million multifamily buildings, accounting for approximately 24% of residential energy use and about 11% of all building energy use in the state. Over 70% of these buildings were constructed prior to 1978, before there were efficiency standards.

Energy and water efficiency improvements in these buildings can provide significant cost savings for renters and property owners, and can help municipalities meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Featured Projects

Bay Area Multifamily Building Enhancements

StopWaste manages BayREN's Bay Area Multifamily Building Enhancements program, which offers cash rebates and no-cost energy consulting for multifamily properties that undertake energy and water upgrades. 

Since 2013, this program has: 

  • Served +26,000 dwelling units in nine Bay Area counties
  • Paid $19+ million of cash rebates 
  • Saved 11,772 megawatt-hours of electricity 
  • Saved 855,022 therms of natural gas 
  • Reduce property owners' energy bills by an estimated $30 million over 10 years

Accelerating Multifamily Building Upgrades

In 2017, the StopWaste Energy Council received a $1 million grant from the California Energy Commission to manage a project that will increase the number of energy upgrades in the Bay Area's multifamily buildings. This project is:

  1. Developing tools to enable broader adoption of multifamily energy assessment ordinances,
  2. Testing California's AB 802 benchmarking and disclosure requirements in the multifamily sector, and
  3. Supporting market-based mechanisms for building energy transparency and financing.

This project builds on work carried out since 2010 by the Multifamily Home Energy Retrofit Coordinating Committee (see below). For more information, click here.

Multifamily Home Energy Retrofit Coordinating Committee (MF HERCC)

Since 2010, StopWaste has convened the Multifamily Subcommittee of the U.S. EPA's California Home Energy Retrofit Coordinating Committee.

As chair of the MF HERCC, StopWaste works with stakeholders in the multifamily sector to develop multifamily energy upgrade program design recommendations and standards. These recommendations have influenced the design of ratepayer-funded multifamily energy upgrade programs, leading to increased participation.

MF Benchmarking Factsheet

View the MF HERCC's final reports

Multifamily Legacy Projects

Green Building Guidelines and Multifamily Green Building Guidelines

StopWaste first published these comprehensive planning, design and construction resources in the mid-2000's. The guidelines were thoroughly researched by building industry experts, and vetted by stakeholders including local government staff, architects, project managers and developers. StopWaste's Green Building Guidelines and Multifamily Green Building Guidelines helped accelerate the adoption of green building principles and practices regionally and nationally.

With support from StopWaste, the guidelines became the foundation for Build It Green's influential GreenPoint Rated certification programs for single-family and multifamily buildings.  

GreenPoint Rated Climate Calculator

StopWaste worked with Build It Green and ICLEI to develop the nation's first third-party verified residential green building calculator designed to measure the greenhouse gas emissions related to building green homes. 

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