Performance Audit of the Green Building Ordinance

King County is committed to responsible environmental stewardship; however, the current implementation of the Green Building Ordinance may not fully leverage its intended impacts. Among the county’s initiatives, several related to the Green Building Ordinance are noteworthy, such as the creation of a Green Building Team, centralized project reporting, the provision of training in sustainable practices, and promoting the use of life cycle cost analysis.

King County’s leadership in responding to climate change depends on its ability to proactively guide green building project managers in making cost-effective decisions that contribute to achieving countywide climate action goals. A key finding of this performance audit is that ambiguity in the Ordinance, coupled with how limits in LEED costs have been established, may lead to outcomes unanticipated by policy-makers and contrary to the intent of promoting cost-effective sustainable development. These outcomes may include foregoing the pursuit of some green building alternatives that may be environmentally beneficial and financially responsible. In addition, incomplete reporting and inconsistent interpretation of key elements of the Ordinance make it difficult to assess program impact.

Our recommendations focus on clarifying requirements in the Ordinance and ensuring better project tracking, reporting, and alignment with countywide sustainability goals. The report also offers an alternative for setting limits to LEED-associated costs that would be consistent among projects.

The County Council requested this audit to help determine how well the current Green Building Ordinance has been carried out before changes go into effect in August 2014. The revised Ordinance will apply cost limits to all projects under the Ordinance and change the goal for LEED certification from Gold to Platinum.