Green Building

Person repairing building

Buildings account for roughly 70% of Redmond’s greenhouse gas emissions - the largest source of emissions in the city. Green building techniques, coupled with upgrades and proper maintenance of existing buildings, can help reduce harmful impacts on the environment, improve occupant health, and support long term sustainability goals.  

The City of Redmond is currently updating its Green Building Incentive Program (RZC 21.67), a voluntary program which offers land use incentives to encourage new construction projects to build green. The City is updating the program to better align with current regulations and city policies.  

Key elements of the proposed Green Building Inventive Program include: 

  • Incentive program – 100% voluntary (consistent with the current program).
  • Applicable to multifamily and commercial projects.
  • Advances 100% electric new construction buildings, which is a key objective necessary to achieve ESAP goals. 
  • Aligns with the Clean Building Performance Standard, which creates energy performance requirements for existing buildings 20,000 SF and above. Alignment with the CBPS will promote higher compliance with the state law and also leverage a widely used standard defined and managed by the state.  
  • Creates flexibility for developers to select the additional techniques most relevant to their project (solar, EV charging stations, tree preservation, etc.).  
  • Offers land use incentives, including height and increased density.  

You can follow the Green Building Incentive Program update, along with other critical improvements to the City’s Zoning Code, through the Redmond Zoning Code Rewrite Phase 2 webpage.