Board of Supervisors Actions

Green Building Resolution

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 and held a public hearing. The next step is to adopt the ordinances, however, the State delayed the effective date of the 2008 Building Energy Efficiency Standards to January 1, 2010. This caused BIG to delay launching of their 2008-2011 green point rated system, also to January 1, 2010, and will mean that the Green Building and Energy Efficiency Ordinances cannot become effective until after January 1, 2010. Immediately after the July 21, 2009 Board approval, the ordinances and cost study will be sent to the California Energy Commission (CEC) for approval. It will be possible to adopt the ordinances anytime after CEC approval as long as the effective date is on or after January 1, 2010. The Board requested staff to review point thresholds for commercial projects for consistency with the minimum LEED certification level, which is now 40 points.

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.