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New roadmap, created through unique regional partnership, paves the way for net zero buildings by 2030

The roadmap should align building codes in Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield counties to achieve climate goals, create consistency for building professionals, promote savings for residents

A new net zero regional roadmap paves the way toward consistent net zero building codes across Eagle, Pitkin and some of Garfield Counties.
Net Zero Regional Roadmap/Courtesy photo

Eagle County has set a lofty goal to combat climate change by achieving an 80% reduction in carbon emissions from 2014 levels by 2050. One major emitter of carbon emissions is buildings, which can be remedied by constructing net zero buildings.

In the Eagle County Climate Action Plan is a goal to reach a net zero or all-electric building code for new construction by 2030.

A cohort of Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield County communities, led by Walking Mountains Science Center, Lotus Engineering and Sustainability and the Community Office for Regional Efficiency, has put together a regional roadmap for how to achieve this goal. 



What is the regional net zero roadmap?

“In implementing a net zero building standard by 2030, it basically guarantees that any infrastructure we build from 2030 onward will be, in essence, operationally carbon-free,” said Kim Schlaepfer, managing director of climate mitigation and resiliency planning for Lotus Engineering & Sustainability. “So those buildings throughout their lifetime will not be responsible for emitting carbon as they are run.”

The roadmap provides concrete steps Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield County municipalities can take to set a standard of net zero new construction. The roadmap is funded by the Colorado Energy Office.

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“This roadmap effort, to me, really brings together all of those pieces of workforce, of thinking about equity and how we want to build affordability, resilience, healthy homes for our local community members,” Schlaepfer said. “And this idea of regional collaboration can make us better and can make us make these goals easier to achieve.”

The roadmap has four main objectives: Define a net zero energy code for new construction, map a path to eliminating operational greenhouse gas emissions generated from new construction, providing local governments a plan for implementing and enforcing net zero new building requirements and supporting ongoing collaboration between municipalities in the region to match each other’s building codes. 

The roadmap defines net zero construction as a building that is powered by electricity, uses renewable energy from the grid and/or on-site generation, can store energy and/or shift energy use to reduce peak demand on the electric grid, achieves energy efficiency performance above base energy codes, is designed to minimize embodied carbon and is EV-ready. 

The roadmap was also created with the intention of reassessing it as it is implemented to better apply it to the real world. “This roadmap was built today with our best-case assumptions of what technology is going to do over the next six years,” Schlaepfer said. “So intentionally built into the roadmap were these reevaluation points.”

And while the roadmap does prioritize all-electric construction, Schlaepfer acknowledged that there will be buildings for which net zero construction does not yet make sense. “There is an understood and needed place for exceptions,” Schlaepfer said. “We know that if we were to change over some industrial process loads from gas to electric, it would be a huge amount of electricity that’s needed. And so it’s about smart electrification. … It’s about being kind of smart with those exceptions and making sure that we’re not hurting our community or putting in place requirements that drive up energy costs.”

If the plan is adopted by local municipalities, all new buildings would be powered by electricity, designed to minimize carbon production and use renewable energy.
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily

Why do we need the roadmap?

“We’re seeing increased temperatures across the state of Colorado, across the United States, across the globe. And we know based on a lot of modeling and also real-life climate examples that that’s leading to higher temperatures, leads to less water availability, it leads to higher risks of intense wildfires,” Schlaepfer said. “And we live right in the middle of a place that you know could be in the next several years highly water insecure and highly at fire risk.”

Most of Eagle County’s existing buildings run on gas, and, as a result, continuously emit carbon. On the other hand, “our electricity supply is continuously getting cleaner. In addition to that, I think it’s a 29% reduction from our 2014 baseline that we get just from the electricity supply going 100% renewable energy,” Schlaepfer said. “The roadmap will result in another 7% carbon emission reduction from that baseline.”

Having all municipalities within a region be aligned on the same codes streamlines the process of building to meet the code requirements for local contractors. “The workforce would really appreciate if local governments could align their codes as much as possible because it’s just less for them to have to know and learn and understand,” Schlaepfer said.

Climate leaders in Eagle County have been working to align local municipalities on the same building codes since 2022. Right now, Eagle County, Eagle, Avon and Minturn are all on the same 2021 codes, while Vail just moved to the 2024 codes and Gypsum is on the 2018 codes. “This new roadmap is sort of a part two of that effort,” Schlaepfer said.

To align with the 2021 codes, most municipalities adopted an “electric preferred standard,” and in 2021, Colorado implemented a requirement for all communities to adopt an “electric readiness standard,” such that any newly constructed home has to be pre-wired for an easy swap from gas to electric fuel. “That means they have to have plugs in the wall, they have to have wire running through the walls, and they have to have enough capacity in their electric panel to support the swap out of a gas appliance to an electric appliance,” Schlaepfer said.

The electric preferred standard means that all buildings in those municipalities — Eagle County, Avon, Minturn, Eagle and Basalt — are built to above code efficiency standards if they have gas in place and are wired for all-electric.

As local energy providers work toward achieving a 100% renewable grid, constructing all-electric buildings, by default, will make the buildings net zero. “Electricity supply is 100% renewable. If you build an all-electric building, you are in effect eliminating carbon,” Schlaepfer said.

Holy Cross Energy is committed to reaching 100% renewable energy by 2030, Xcel Energy is mandated by state law to achieve 80% renewable energy by 2030, and Aspen Electric and Glenwood Springs Electric are already at 100% renewable energy.

Building to all-electric code also provides savings for those who live in residential buildings, as renewable energy lowers energy bills. According to the Eagle County Climate Equity Plan, a survey recently administered by Walking Mountains Science Center and soon to be published, “72% of Spanish-speaking survey takers and 32% of English-speaking survey takers use money meant for important needs like food and medicine to pay their energy bills instead,” Schlaepfer said.

“Additionally, renters who often live in less energy-efficient properties face additional barriers like landlords being unwilling to make energy-saving upgrades,” Schlaepfer said. “I think that point really drives home that this roadmap isn’t for the wealthy billionaires. … It’s not for our visitors. It’s really to make sure that we as a community are prioritizing resilient, healthy, sustainable buildings for our local community to make sure that we, as a community, can continue to stay and thrive here.”

How has the roadmap been received so far, and what happens next?

Lotus and Walking Mountains hosted six listen and learn sessions to ask for input on the roadmap from the local workforce in the building industry, including architects, general contractors, mechanical engineers and mechanical contractors. “Across the board, we heard a really strong sentiment that consistent codes would be really great,” Schlaepfer said.

The concept of building new construction projects all-electric is not new for most Eagle County municipalities. “The trend right now across the board when we see local governments building new affordable housing complexes is that they are all-electric net-zero already,” Schlaepfer said. 

The roadmap needs to be implemented by local governments by ordinance or resolution to apply to new construction. The plan’s leaders will be coming to Eagle and Pitkin County municipalities to present the plan over the next six months. “We’re trying to take a really targeted and strategic approach to getting folks to adopt this and getting everybody on the same page,” Schlaepfer said.

“But you’re not done when you adopt this,” Schlaepfer said. “If you agree to this, you’re agreeing to ongoing coordination and collaboration with your regional, local government partners. You’re agreeing to … really trying to take a holistic regional approach to a code standard rather than every local government putting their own unique spin on a code that lands us with seven different codes across the community that a builder has to know.” 


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