BY KORBETT MOSESLY for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 10/9/2026
Somewhere in Tacoma there may be a 24,000-square-foot building — a church annex, a medical office, an apartment building on Hilltop — whose owner hasn’t yet connected a state energy law to a state incentive that could pay them for complying.
The state’s numbers can’t tell us who that owner is. They do tell us something else: the money is moving slowly.
Washington’s Clean Buildings Performance Standard (CBPS) is a 2019 law, expanded in 2022, that requires owners of larger buildings to measure and manage their energy use. The biggest buildings went first. The next wave — called Tier 2 — is due July 1, 2027.
To help with the cost, the Legislature created an incentive: comply early, and qualify for a payment. The Department of Commerce opened the Tier 2 Early Adopter Incentive Program on July 1, 2025, with $150 million behind it.
About 14 months later, Commerce reports it has awarded $7.3 million.
Most coverage of this law has focused on downtown towers. That is the wrong picture for Pierce County.
The apartment piece matters here. It means mid-sized rental buildings — not just offices — fall under a state energy law. For owners without facilities staff, that is easy to miss.
Tier 2 owners have three jobs: track the building’s energy use over time (called benchmarking), put an energy management plan in place and run an operations and maintenance program. They also compare the building’s energy use to a state target. For now, Tier 2 buildings don’t have to hit that target.
That matters. Tier 2 is not an order to replace a boiler. But it is more than a form. The plans have to be written, put to work and reported to Commerce.
Commerce, Pierce County and Tacoma Power all post guidance online. The information is public. Finding it takes knowing it exists.
Two Deadlines, and One Date to Double-Check
The July 2027 date is the one getting attention. There is an earlier one.
Some buildings qualify for an exemption. Owners must apply no later than 180 days before the compliance date — January 2, 2027. That is less than four months away.
The rules also allow extensions for certain hardships, like a change in ownership or financial limits, and a temporary “conditional compliance” option. Each has its own window, so ask Commerce early.
That last date needs a second look. Commerce’s program page tells owners to send in both compliance and incentive applications by July 1, 2027. But state law, RCW 19.27A.220, says eligible Tier 2 owners may apply for the incentive through June 1, 2030. Owners should confirm their incentive deadline directly with Commerce.
Either way, the advice is the same: don’t wait. The compliance deadline is not in question, and the money goes out first-come, first-served.
The Money Is Real. It Is Moving Slowly.
In its first 14 months, the program awarded about $520,000 a month on average. That is an Opportunity Link calculation from Commerce’s totals, not a state figure.
A slow start doesn’t mean the money will sit forever. Commerce told the Legislature in March 2026 that it expects about 15,000 Tier 2 applications by the July 2027 deadline. If most of those owners file near the end, they will be lining up for the same first-come, first-served pool.
That is the real case for moving now. Owners who file early are at the front of the line. How the payment works matters too. Commerce reviews and approves applications. The check itself comes from the
owner’s utility, backed by state public utility tax credits. That means the utility has to take part.
Commerce told the Legislature that some owners can’t get the incentive because their utility doesn’t participate — smaller utilities aren’t required to.
Under House Bill 1976, passed in 2024, apartment owners who commit to anti-displacement protections can receive a larger incentive by signing Commerce’s Anti-Displacement Agreement. It is a tenant-protection tool tucked inside an energy law.
One catch: the enhanced rate is $0.75 per square foot or the estimated cost of compliance, whichever is lower. If that cost comes in below the base rate, Commerce pays the base rate.
The Law Saw This Gap Coming
A property company with many buildings often has a compliance consultant on call. The owner of a single building — a congregation with its own fellowship hall, a nonprofit that owns its office, a family with one apartment building — usually doesn’t.
Lawmakers expected that. State law directs Commerce to give extra technical help to Tier 2 owners who typically don’t employ building managers, and it names apartment buildings, child care centers and houses of worship. It also tells Commerce to put under-resourced buildings, rural buildings and buildings rented mostly to small businesses first in line.
Commerce built pieces of that support: an incentive guidebook, an online portal, notification letters to owners and free monthly office hours. It also created BEACON, a fellowship that gave owners free technical help. But BEACON’s first group of fellows finished March 31, 2026. Commerce says a second group has not been scheduled, leaving a gap in that service.
So the question for Pierce County isn’t whether anyone built a support system. It’s whether that system is reaching local owners — especially the ones with the least help — in time.
The Question Nobody Attached to the Deadline
This story started because Tamar Jackson, Senior Director of Community Engagement at WorkForce Central, went looking. Reading state materials, he connected three things most people were treating separately: a deadline coming at local building owners, state dollars set aside to help meet it and a workforce question nobody had attached to either.
“We keep treating these as three separate problems. Building owners need this work done, the state has already paid for it, and we have young people in this county looking for a way in,” said Tamar Jackson, Senior Director of Community Engagement, Workforce Central. “That’s not three problems. That’s one solution nobody has assembled yet.”
His point: this should be one conversation. In Pierce County, it has been three.
What Wenatchee Did About It
Across the Cascades, Wenatchee School District answered the same problem with high school students.
Its Student Energy Managers program runs in partnership with Advanced Energy Management and Chelan County Public Utility District. Students hold paid internships doing real work: inspecting buildings, pulling utility data and tracking energy use alongside professionals.
In July 2026, the district announced that Commerce had notified it the program helped avoid an estimated $433,000 penalty. The district reports students have cut districtwide energy use by more than 30 percent and generated $87,649 in savings. Their work has reached 11 Tier 1 buildings across the region, and students are now supporting 37 Tier 2 buildings at no cost to those owners. The district says that work is funded through the state’s Early Adopter incentive.
“This is what student-led, real-world learning looks like. Our students aren’t just learning about energy efficiency — they’re directly saving the district money, helping our community meet a serious state mandate, and building a more energy-efficient future for Wenatchee,” said Kory Kalahar, Superintendent, Wenatchee School District
Commerce featured the students in its May 2025 Clean Buildings Bulletin and said the Wenatchee model is being designed for replication across the state.
That doesn’t prove the model will work the same way in Pierce County. It does show the idea at the center of this series is not hypothetical.
Pierce County has the pieces: a public utility that already supplies building energy data, a workforce development board, technical colleges, school districts and local owners of Tier 2 buildings who need this work done. Opportunity Link has covered what happens here when systems that usually run separately share one site — a farm partnership that put foster-connected young people on payroll in a single growing season, and a correctional camps pathway that turned confinement into credentialed forestry work. The pattern holds. What’s missing is the arrangement.
What a youth and young adult energy training program could look like in Pierce County — who would run it, who would pay for it and what Tacoma Public Utilities would bring — is the subject of part two of this series.
This article was reproduced from the Opportunity Links website with permission. See more at olink.news.
