Board of Supervisors Actions

Green Building Actions

The Green Building Resolution passed at the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on November 4, 2008. This represents the initial step in the Board giving policy guidance and directing staff to prepare a draft green building ordinance. In adopting a green building ordinance, the Board established Sonoma County as a leader among other counties in the State. At the time of the resolution, only six other counties across the state have adopted green building ordinances: San Mateo, Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Marin counties.

The November 4, 2008 action adopted a resolution selecting the Build it Green (BIG) New Home Construction, Home Remodeling and Multifamily Green Building Guidelines for Residential Construction, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Commercial Green Building System for Commercial Construction guidelines, along with their respective Green Points Checklists, set compliance thresholds, and directed staff to develop a green building ordinance based on these guidelines.

On July 21, 2009 the Board of Supervisors approved the Green Building Ordinance, Energy Efficiency Ordinance and the Energy Cost Effective Study.

On November 3, 2009, the Board of Supervisors re-opened the public hearing on the Green Building Ordinance due to changes requested by the California Energy Commission (CEC). These changes were non substantive in that they simply required Sonoma County to state in the ordinance that compliance with green building rating systems would not result in the failure to demonstrate compliance with the California Building Energy Efficiency Standards (Title 24, part 6) of the California Building Code for the building in effect at the time the building permit was issued. The Board approved this amended ordinance and approved a Resolution Adopting Guidelines, Rating Systems and Compliance Thresholds for the Sonoma County Green Building Program. The California Energy Commission (CEC) is scheduled to approve the Green Building Ordinance on December 16, 2009. Tentative adoption of the Green Building Ordinance and Energy Efficiency Ordinance will take place in January 2010 with the ordinances becoming effective in February 2010.

Other Related Board Actions
On July 8, 2008 the Board approved development of Regional Climate Protection Coordination Plan.

On September 12th, 2006, the Board approved the Climate Protection Action Plan as the road map to create these reductions.

On September 27, 2005 the Board, along with all other local jurisdictions in the County, committed to a community-wide goal of a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from our 1990 baseline levels by the year 2015.

On August 20, 2002, the Board approved a Resolution committing the county to participate in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives Climate Protection Campaign to set a target to reduce the county's internal operations greenhouse gas emissions (ghg) by 20% of year 2000 baseline levels to approximately 30,000 tons per year by the year 2010.