On June 13 Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber approved and signed House Bill 2801 into law. Among other things, this bill defines and clarifies who can provide an energy performance score, ensuring that only professionals with the proper training and credentials will deliver these scores to Oregon homeowners. Earth Advantage (EA) provided advice, expert testimony and served on a working group that dealt with those portions of the bill regarding energy performance scoring.
“We applaud the efforts by Representative Jules Baily to establish some critical ‘rules of the road’ related to energy performance scoring in Oregon,” said David Heslam, EA’s executive director. “This bill will provide some much needed consistency for all Oregon industry professionals and homeowners.”
The bill creates a new professional designation of “home energy assessor.” Only qualified professionals authorized and issued a license by the Construction Contractor’s Board will be able to assign a home energy performance score to a residential building. It also directs the Oregon Department of Energy to designate training programs for home energy assessors that would ensure their competence in performing energy audits and assigning home energy performance scores.
The bill directs the Oregon Department of Energy to establish a standard for residential energy performance scores. It also allows the Oregon Department of Energy to collect home energy performance scores and to maintain a database of scores that can be used to inform future policy.
The standardization and quality control features in HB 2801 align with EA’s own work in partnership with the Bullitt Foundation, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) and WSU Energy Program to develop a technical policy “playbook” for the region. This playbook aims to serve as a guide for implementing and operationalizing energy scoring and disclosure programs regionally.