City of Seattle 2050 Carbon Reduction Plan

Updated May, 2022

In anticipation of Seattle’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, Ecotope developed energy use intensity (EUI) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets that demonstrate how to meet this target. Policymakers have not had a sufficient level of detail to focus priorities and building owners have no metric for how their buildings’ performance relates to the overall goal. To address this gap, we analyzed the energy reductions needed in 19 different building types (e.g. office, grocery, single family, multifamily, etc.) by 5-10 year intervals leading up to 2050. Ecotope assembled data from local utility conservation potential assessments, building stock assessments, population and employment forecasts, and the City’s climate goals to inform EUI and GHG forecasts and targets by building type, building end use, and fuel type. Results of the analysis will be used to identify priority building types, to track progress against the Seattle Climate Action Plan, to communicate additional policy intervention needs, and as a planning tool to evaluate the impact of specific approaches. This approach supports a bottom-up strategy for designing effective policies, where the structure of the policy is directly informed by the technical mechanisms required to achieve those policy objectives. The model can then be used to analyze the impact of the policies based on clear performance metrics.