Mayor Daniella Levine Cava launches Building Efficiency 305 Challenge

Today, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava officially launched the Miami-Dade Building Efficiency 305 Challenge (BE305 Challenge) with support from the Miami-Dade County Office of Resilience and in partnership with leading business and community organizations.

The BE305 Challenge empowers local building owners and managers to improve building performance and reduce operational costs by implementing benchmarking and other low- or no-cost strategies. The cohort’s overall goal will be to collectively reduce energy and water consumption 20 percent by 2026. The Challenge is designed for large existing buildings with residential, commercial, and institutional uses. More than 50 buildings from 10 of Miami-Dade County’s 34 municipalities have already signed on to the Challenge from both the public and private sectors. Florida Power and Light and Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department are key partners in the Challenge and will work with the Office of Resilience to empower participants to obtain the best possible results.

“Efficiency is not just about saving energy and water – it’s also about protecting the environment and building our green economy,” said Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “Now more than ever we need to invest in innovative ideas that save money and create jobs while also creating co-benefits that reduce pollution and improve public health. The BE305 Challenge is exactly that type of program, and we look forward to seeing how our building influencers who have already joined the Challenge will benefit from this program while showing us how to learn from their success.”

Through substantive energy and water efficiency in County, municipal, institutional, and commercial buildings, the BE305 Challenge helps building owners and managers free up business capital for more productive uses, stimulate growth for communities, foster new business opportunities, and reduce the carbon footprint of buildings to help Miami-Dade County reach the goal of an 80% reduction of greenhouse gases from 2019 levels by 2050.

The BE305 Challenge is a part of County’s Building Efficiency 305 Program - a broader initiative designed to make Miami-Dade more resilient by supporting property owners and managers in their quest to improve building performance through training, access to financing, benchmarking, retuning (or retro-commissioning), and building code education

Buildings produce 37% of community greenhouse gas emissions in Miami-Dade County, and up to 30% of this energy is wasted. The BE305 Challenge targets that waste. The economic and environmental benefits associated with the broader BE305 program include $37 million to $112 million in energy and water savings, 61 million gallons of water saved, and up to 1 million metric tons of GHG emission

eliminated, along with substantial job creation, as forecast by independent economic analyses from Autocase and Greenlink.

Miami-Dade County has been leading by example through the Building Efficiency 305 program for the past three years with impressive results in reducing energy and water use in its own government buildings. Now the County is ready to challenge the community to increase energy and water efficiency in all large buildings! For more information, or to join the BE305 Challenge, visit the BE305 Hub Site.