Description
King County has many buildings with natural gas-powered equipment and heating systems. Too often capital projects or facilities maintenance replaces equipment with like for like natural gas powered without evaluating options to transition to an all-electric option. King County will strive to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil fuels by completely, or if needed, partially, eliminating the installation of any new equipment that consumes fossil fuels, such as space heating and hot water heating needs, with the exception of emergency backup systems and redundancies, like emergency generators. Emergency generator technology is not yet advanced enough to fully replace fossil fueled systems in most County facilities.
King County will develop a policy for the elimination of fossil fuel use in new construction and substantial renovation as the primary space and hot water heating systems. The policy will allow for limited fossil fueled systems for redundancy and when exceptional logistical, space, or other conditions exist that would result in significant logistical or financial impacts.
Beyond stated exemptions, once the policy is in place, King County agencies will be required to apply for a waiver and get approval from the Executive Climate Office to purchase new fossil fuel using equipment.