ENROLLED ORIGINAL
A RESOLUTION
25-182
IN THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
June 20, 2023
To declare an emergency with respect to the need to amend the Green Buildings Act of 2006 to
clarify the applicability of net zero energy requirements to housing projects already
funded or in progress prior to the applicability of those requirements.
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, That this
resolution may be cited as the “Green Housing Transition Emergency Declaration Resolution of
2023”.
Sec. 2. (a) Human-driven climate change is a global disaster of incomprehensible scope.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific clearinghouse body of the United
Nations, writes that “Hazards and associated risks expected in the near-term include an increase
in heat-related human mortality and morbidity (high confidence), food-borne, water-borne, and
vector-borne diseases (high confidence), and mental health challenges (very high confidence),
flooding in coastal and other low-lying cities and regions (high confidence), biodiversity loss in
land, freshwater and ocean ecosystems (medium to very high confidence, depending on
ecosystem), and a decrease in food production in some regions (high confidence).” Mitigating
the harms caused by human-driven climate change is a moral imperative of the highest order.
(b) In the District of Columbia, the Department of Energy and Environment reports that
government operation of buildings was responsible for greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to
over 214 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the year 2020 alone.
(c) The net zero energy standard requires that a building’s energy consumption not
exceed the building’s onsite or dedicated offsite renewable energy generation and that no fossil
fuel combustion take place at the building. Under current statutory provisions enacted in July
2022, the Mayor is required to promulgate rules by the end of calendar year 2026 that will
impose a version of this standard on all new and substantially improved buildings.
(d) On January 12, 2023, Mayor Bowser signed into law the Greener Government
Buildings Act of 2022, which among other things compels District government agencies to
achieve net zero energy compliance in most new or substantially improved government and
government-funded buildings.
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 ENROLLED ORIGINAL
(e) In light of the earlier legislation described above, the effect of the net zero energy
compliance provisions of the Greener Government Buildings Amendment Act of 2022 would be
to accelerate the existing net zero mandate specifically for government and government-funded
buildings.
(f) On June 13, 2023, the Council passed the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Support Act of
2023, which repealed the subject-to-appropriations provision of the Greener Government
Buildings Amendment Act of 2022, making the legislation applicable in recognition of the
funding made available to implement the legislation.
(g) The District of Columbia and its surrounding area are in the grip of an affordable
housing crisis. According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, our metropolitan area
was home to over 54,624 extremely low-income households and 73% of those households were
severely cost-burdened (that is, spending more than half their income on housing costs and
utilities).
(h) The District government attempts to respond to this crisis through a variety of tools
including the Housing Production Trust Fund.
(i) The Department of Housing and Community Development has raised concern that the
applicability of the newly accelerated mandate would render infeasible a number of ongoing
housing development projects, because the Department of Housing and Community
Development and its housing finance partner agencies have already approved detailed
applications for District government financing that were developed at a time when net zero
energy design requirements were not in effect and therefore did not take net zero energy design
requirements into account.
(j) Abruptly abandoning existing housing development finance plans would mean
missing out on important opportunities to increase affordable housing and retain lower-income
households in the District.
(k) Emergency legislation is necessary to advance a limited exemption from net zero
energy construction requirements for housing development projects that have already received
financing approval and to avoid disruption to these important planning processes.
Sec. 3. The Council determines that the circumstances enumerated in section 2 constitute
an emergency making it necessary that the Green Housing Transition Emergency Amendment
Act of 2023 be adopted after a single reading.
Sec. 4. This resolution shall take effect immediately.
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