By Bethany Beers, EEI Building Performance
Colorado’s built environment is entering a period of rapid transformation. Rising energy costs, grid constraints, and new regulatory requirements are reshaping how buildings are designed, operated, and evaluated. At the same time, owners and operators are navigating shifting tenant expectations, aging infrastructure, and the need to prepare for a carbon‑constrained future.
Across Colorado and the country, clients are wrestling with complex decisions about adopting new technologies such as heat pumps and electric boilers, committing to electrification today or being ready to convert in the future, or staying with more proven technologies that have gotten marginally more efficient in the last few years. Any building operator knows that you have to balance your capital budget, operating expenses, and willingness to take a risk on new technology.
As a sustainability and building‑performance consultant working across Colorado, I see firsthand how these pressures are converging. Sustainability has shifted from a “nice to have” to an essential operational strategy.
Three forces are driving this change more than any others: the expansion of electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, the rollout of the State of Colorado’s Building Performance Compliance Program alongside Energize Denver, and the growing importance of retro‑commissioning to get to compliance. Together, they are redefining what it means to operate a high‑performing building in Colorado.
Colorado’s EV Infrastructure Boom Is Reshaping Building Operations
Colorado’s EV adoption rate continues to outpace the national average, driven by state incentives, policy commitments, and consumer demand. As more residents and tenants transition to electric vehicles, commercial and multifamily buildings are increasingly expected to provide EV charging as a standard amenity. For many owners, this shift introduces new challenges and new opportunities. EV charging infrastructure places a significant additional load on electrical systems. Many existing buildings were not designed to support this demand, and owners are discovering that EV readiness requires more than installing a few chargers. It often involves electrical service and distribution upgrades, load management strategies, and coordination with utilities to ensure capacity and reliability.
Planning early is essential. Load studies, energy modeling, and capital planning help owners understand the long‑term implications of EV infrastructure and avoid costly surprises. Smart charging systems with integrated demand management, paired with renewable energy and energy storage, can help mitigate peak demand charges, reduce operational costs, and even reduce the infrastructure needed to support the chargers.
One of the most important aspects when considering EV charging infrastructure, especially for a large project, is to begin conversations with the utility provider as early as possible. A project I’m currently working on in Colorado thought they were engaging with the utility provider early enough in the design process, only to be met with the news that their design for a separate service and transformer for the EV charging infrastructure would not be allowed, and due to the increased size of the project service transformer, it would add many weeks to the delivery and installation schedule they hadn’t accounted for.
While the team followed the standard process for a new utility service application, the utility’s process doesn’t allow for a planning conversation sooner. This highlights an area where legacy standard processes need to be updated and refined to meet the changing needs of the regulatory landscape.
As EV adoption accelerates, teams that proactively plan for charging infrastructure will be better positioned to attract tenants, meet sustainability goals, and maintain resilience.
Prepare for the State of Building Performance Compliance Program and Energize Denver
Colorado’s regulatory landscape is evolving quickly. The State of Colorado’s Building Performance Compliance Program and Energize Denver are ushering in a new era of mandatory energy and carbon performance standards. These policies require owners to meet defined performance targets on specific timelines, with financial penalties for non‑compliance.
For many owners, the most significant shift is the need for transparency and collaboration. Meeting performance targets requires coordinated action between owners, operators, property managers, and tenants. Energy data must be tracked, shared, and acted upon. Operational practices must evolve. Capital planning must align with compliance deadlines. Beginning to track energy use alone can be daunting to an owner who has never had to worry about it before.
The most successful owners are taking proactive steps now: benchmarking performance, conducting energy audits, identifying operational improvements, and evaluating long‑term capital needs. Incentives and utility programs can help offset costs, but early action is key. Oftentimes, utility rebate programs have annual funding caps and award funds on a first-come, first-served basis.
When the first round of Energize Denver compliance letters went out, many owners were surprised by the magnitude of the potential fines for missing performance targets. Shortly after, one client received their initial letter, showing possible penalties of more than $1 million per building. My team helped them evaluate a three-year capital plan to bring two high-rise multifamily properties into compliance. Given limited control over in-unit energy use, we focused on measures the owner could directly influence. These included developing a tenant energy-savings guide, installing a lobby energy dashboard to track progress, improving lighting and HVAC controls in common areas, and enclosing a rooftop pool with a solarium. These strategies significantly improved energy and water performance while converting the pool into a year-round tenant amenity, a win-win for everyone.
Buildings that wait until deadlines approach will face steeper compliance curves and higher financial risk. Across Colorado, sustainability is no longer a branding exercise, it is a core operational strategy. Buildings that invest early in performance improvements gain lower operating costs, stronger tenant satisfaction, and greater resilience. Those who delay face rising energy expenses, regulatory uncertainty, and potential penalties. The good news is that Colorado’s building community is well‑positioned to lead. With thoughtful planning, data‑driven strategies, and a willingness to adapt, owners can navigate this transition successfully.
Retro‑Commissioning: The Most Cost‑Effective Path to Carbon Reduction
While EV infrastructure represents a new frontier, and Energize Denver represents the changing regulatory landscape, retro‑commissioning (RCx) remains one of the most powerful tools for improving building performance. As buildings age, systems drift from their original design and operational intent. Equipment becomes less efficient, controls fall out of calibration, and operational issues accumulate. RCx identifies these inefficiencies, corrects them, and restores optimal performance often with minimal capital investment.
For owners facing new performance standards, RCx is becoming indispensable. It reduces energy use, improves occupant comfort, and extends equipment life. And it’s not to be confused with an energy audit, but rather it’s a deeper dive into system evaluation and operations.
One of the most compelling hospital retro‑commissioning (RCx) projects I’ve worked on involved an owner who used RCx as a first‑line strategy to evaluate electrification of their central utility plant. Given the system’s age, we hypothesized that what was assumed to be a fully utilized plant actually had significant stranded capacity, an assumption rooted in outdated design criteria and conservative operational practices.
To test this, we incrementally reduced the heating water temperature and monitored building performance over several weeks, repeating the process until the setpoint had been lowered by 30 degrees. The results were striking: only 15% of spaces experienced comfort issues, and fewer than 10% were attributed to insufficient terminal unit capacity. Prior to this analysis, the hospital had been advised that electrifying the plant with heat recovery chillers and electric boilers would require an additional $14 million to replace the heating distribution system. Through RCx, the owner avoided that capital expense, achieved more than $50,000 in annual operational savings, and demonstrated that their path to electrification was far more achievable than previously believed.
In mission‑critical and high‑tech facilities, RCx also enhances reliability and operational continuity, an increasingly important factor as buildings become more complex and interconnected. Modern RCx is data‑driven. It integrates monitoring‑based commissioning, fault detection analytics, and continuous performance tracking. Owners receive a prioritized roadmap of improvements with clear ROI, allowing them to make informed decisions about where to invest and what incentive programs are available to help offset costs. In many cases, RCx uncovers low‑cost operational changes that deliver immediate savings, helping owners meet compliance requirements without major capital upgrades.
What excites me most about this transition is that improving and extending the life of existing buildings is one of the most sustainable strategies we have. I’m encouraged that the City of Denver and the State of Colorado are accelerating this work, because it directly supports the health of our communities, from the air we breathe to the water we rely on to live. It’s an opportunity to lead, support our neighbors, and reduce environmental impact, while often lowering costs for owners and occupants alike.
EV readiness, retro‑commissioning, and proactive compliance planning are not isolated initiatives, they are interconnected components of a more resilient, efficient, and future‑ready built environment. The decisions owners make today will shape how their buildings perform for decades to come. Colorado’s sustainability turning point is here. And I’m proud to be part of it.
