Energy Model for Building Emissions Requirements (EMBER)

Existing buildings account for 30 percent of end-use greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and 60 to 70 percent of emissions in many major cities. For this reason, decarbonizing existing buildings is critical to meeting local, state, regional, and national climate targets. A building performance standard is a policy tool that requires building owners to reduce building energy use or emissions to meet mandatory performance targets for their properties. These targets become stricter over time, driving long-term building decarbonization. Energy Model for Building Emissions Requirements (EMBER) is a Synapse toolkit for evaluating the energy and emissions performance of buildings in a jurisdiction and creating custom standards tailored to the existing building stock. EMBER helps decision-makers and stakeholders:

• Create jurisdiction-specific building decarbonization targets
• Evaluate tradeoffs in policy design
• Identify locally appropriate decarbonization pathways
• Track progress toward climate and energy goals, visualizing key performance metrics
• Project energy costs and emissions in the context of an ever-changing electricity grid
• Design compliance mechanisms and estimate their costs
• Benchmark equity indicators and set achievable targets

Synapse used EMBER to design building performance standards (Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinances or BERDO) for the City of Newton and Boston.