Not All Electricity Is Created The Same: NY Buildings Meet Zero Carbon

New York's law, although among the most ambitious in the country, is not alone; several states are moving toward carbon emissions regulations for buildings. And, in addition, the private sector, including financial investors, is looking more critically at carbon emissions.

But there is a glaring gap in most of these policies: They calculate carbon by looking simply at how much electricity a building uses on an annual basis, and they fail to distinguish between electricity that was produced from renewable sources, which results in nearly zero carbon emissions and electricity produced from carbon-intensive fossil fuels. This means that a building in California receiving a good part of its electricity from a utility company that produces electricity from solar generation scores the same as a building in another state where the utility company makes all of its electricity from coal and other fossil fuels. Read the full article