It is critical to understand the current state of the building ecosystem before developing a framework, roadmap, or other work connected to scaling clean buildings efforts. SCALE 2030: Clean Buildings Ecosystem Assessment for Washington compiles existing data and research from state, regional, and federal sources to develop a holistic view of the existing building ecosystem in Washington.

The findings in this paper inform the strategies presented in SCALE 2030: Clean Buildings Transition Framework for Washington.

Explore key findings below:

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Emissions and Energy Use

Emissions in Washington’s residential and commercial buildings increased by 62% between 1990 and 2021. Counting residential and commercial buildings, building sector emissions are 26% of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Buildings are the largest end use sector for both natural gas and electricity in the state. The sector consumes 77% of the state’s electricity and accounts for 42% of its natural gas consumption.
Transitioning away from natural gas in buildings would reduce the state’s natural gas emissions by nearly half.
In 2022, the building sector spent nearly $2 billion on natural gas and $7 billion on electricity.
Most natural gas consumed in Washington is imported from Canada, while Washington is a net exporter of electricity. Shifting energy use towards electricity keeps more dollars in Washington.

Building Types

As of 2023, Washington had 3.3 million housing units, with a high concentration of single-family and low-rise multifamily homes. Single-family homes are defined in the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance’s Residential Building Stock Assessment as detached single-family, townhomes/rowhomes, and homes within two-unit, three-unit, and four-unit buildings. Low-rise multi-family homes are defined as having one to three stories. Combined, these types of homes make up 92% of housing units. Clean buildings solutions will need to work for these majority segments.
Statewide, the largest commercial building types by floor area are retail/services, mixed commercial use, and warehouses. These three types make up 52% of commercial floor area.
With offices and schools added, these five types make up 75% of commercial floor area. Clean buildings solutions will need to work for these types of commercial buildings.
Rental homes, which face unique challenges to completing upgrades, make up 1/3 of residential units in the state.

Geographic Distribution

To better understand how buildings are distributed across the state, the SCALE 2030 team broke the state into eight Clean Energy regions.

Over half of housing units are concentrated in the Puget Sound region and 79% of housing units are in western Washington.
The Puget Sound region could be used to pilot and establish strategies to transition the majority of units and inform tailored approaches in other regions of the state.

An estimated 66% of commercial floor area is in Puget Sound.
The Eastern region, which includes Spokane, has the second-largest concentration of commercial buildings.
Most other regions have less than 5% of the state’s total commercial floor area.
This points to the Puget Sound and Eastern regions as important areas to focus on to address commercial building decarbonization in Washington.

Building Sector Policies

While existing state climate policies like the Clean Energy Transformation Act and Climate Commitment Act establish high-level goals for clean buildings, there are large gaps in building sector-specific policies that could help advance clean buildings.
This table summarizes existing building sector policies (blue boxes) and policies that are needed (dashes). It is organized by Clean Building Performance Standard Tiers, with an added “Tier 3” that would include smaller commercial and residential buildings.
The analysis points to a need for more holistic policies beyond the Clean Building Performance Standard and energy codes.

Barriers

Lack of tracking and accountability
Policy gaps
Lack of alignment between market actors and policy goals
Low awareness of technologies and value proposition of upgrades, and lack of time to acquire knowledge; building owners and occupants, contractors
High costs of building energy upgrades, and limited access to grants, incentives, or loans
Inconsistent access to clean buildings services and technologies across the state
Limited funding

Opportunities

Strong building code for new buildings
CBPS reducing energy use in large existing buildings
Conservation targets in I-937 that drive energy efficiency programs
NEEA’s existing market transformation success and exploration of whole building performance focus
CCA funding
CETA driving clean electricity
New Washington Builds green bank launching programs that will increase access to finance and bring in private capital

Existing policies, programs, and market transformation efforts provide starting points for achieving a zero-emission, highly efficient, modernized building stock. However, changes are needed to deliver complete policies and regulatory pathways that could transform and modernize the building stock. Successfully making these changes is critical to meet Washington’s goal of 95% emissions reductions from 1990 levels and net-zero emissions by 2050.