Building Baselines: Emily Curley
From a serendipitous college course that transformed abstract energy concepts into hands-on learning, Emily Curley’s journey into the world of energy efficiency has been driven by a passion for making the invisible visible. Now serving as the Building Energy Performance Manager for the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, she weaves together technical rigor, data-driven insights, and human-centered communication to advance ambitious sustainability goals across the region. Calico’s conversation with Emily explores how her foundational experiences continue to shape her strategy for empowering building owners and communities to take meaningful climate action. We hope you enjoy!
Your journey to energy efficiency seems to have begun with a transformative college course that made complex energy concepts tangible through hands-on learning. How has that early experience continued to shape your approach to sustainability education and engagement?
Yes, I definitely stumbled into the energy efficiency field by mistake. It’s easy to forget, when you are thinking about energy efficiency and sustainability day in and day out, that these concepts are not top of mind to many people. A real challenge for those working in or considering a career in the sustainability field is a need to balance hard skills and soft skills. It’s important to have a deep understanding of the technical aspects but just as important to be able to communicate and connect with people.
You've worked across diverse sectors - from education advocacy to university sustainability management to high-performance building consulting - each time leveraging data and human connections. How do you see building level data sets as a strategic tool for driving systemic change, and what insights have you gained about translating technical information into actionable sustainability strategies?
Part of the reason I wanted to work in local government was the chance to work on helping building owners access and navigate their building data and to start benchmarking. It’s so trite at this point, but you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
How do you see the role of storytelling and personal connection in motivating meaningful environmental action, especially when working with building owners and operators?
There are so many “whys” to sustainability, it helps to identify and match someone’s why, be that climate protection, dollars and cents, comfort, compliance, environmental justice, or something else. I think a lot of people start by just wanting to check a compliance box and we’re slowly helping them to interpret their benchmarking results and move toward action.
Montgomery County has an ambitious goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, and commercial buildings represent over 26% of current emissions. Given your background in data analysis and building performance, what do you believe are the most critical interventions needed to transform the commercial building sector's approach to energy efficiency?
Before I started with the county I worked at an energy consulting company. We were working with clients who “get it”. They value sustainability. They invested in a consultant to help them. These are the people ahead of the curve, understanding how energy efficiency can improve their bottom line, and proactively looking at more efficient operations, maintenance, and improvements. Still, even in this motivated set, I never encountered a building that didn’t have some energy improvements available once you start to look for them.
Moving into local government, one of the interventions is what I’m working on in Montgomery County: building performance standards that move improvements from a small set of motivated companies to getting most of the largest commercial and multifamily buildings to benchmark and track their buildings’ performance, see where they stand, and make targeted improvements.
Let’s dream a bit. Tomorrow, you wake up and every utility can deliver a complete data set for the built world, including for Affordable Housing / Multifamily buildings, when owners ask for it. Utility program owners can use it to empower and inform their programs. Customers and building owners can use it to make smarter decisions for their buildings. What are you most excited about and why? What else do you think is possible with whole building data access at scale?
In our region, and many regions across the US, routinely accessing whole building data and benchmarking has become second nature. You click a few buttons, you benchmark every year, you see where you are, you target investments, and you track the results. Sadly, not all utilities are delivering the data needed to even take the first steps to benchmark, make informed decisions, and in some cases access funding incentives. I’m glad that EPA has started a campaign to expand access to whole building data.
One of the difficulties with energy efficiency, compared to a lot of sustainability initiatives like renewable energy or recycling and composting, is that it’s totally invisible. I’m a big fan of disclosure and labeling programs that make energy performance evident. An underappreciated facet of our County’s – and many – benchmarking laws is that they also have a disclosure element. EPA research has shown that buildings that benchmark consistently see moderate energy reductions every year, even in the absence of performance standards.
But since we’re dreaming, I’m going to get greedy and imagine that besides whole building data, decision makers also start getting and using interval consumption data too. Many utilities have already installed smart meters and make this data available. More granular data can enable a lot of impactful quick wins and easily show buildings that are running 24/7 and prompt set-back and scheduling adjustments, show when buildings are starting up and shutting down each day to review of schedules, better manage costly peaks, etc.
Knowing what can be done with the copious amount of data that buildings produce – energy, building automation system, maintenance, occupancy, etc – it’s frustrating that we’re still far from even whole building data access for all buildings, but it’s a start.
At the same time, it’s been our north star that our BEPS policy is both ambitious and achievable, accounts for unique circumstances, and recognizes that while we want all buildings to make progress, they are all different – structurally, operationally, financially. It has been absolutely critical to get stakeholder feedback early and throughout this process. We frankly spent years engaging stakeholders.
Montgomery County has taken a pioneering stance with its Building Energy Performance Standards by creating flexible compliance pathways, particularly for economically vulnerable stakeholders. Can you walk me through the strategic thinking behind the provisions for specially designated buildings, and how these targeted exemptions and extended payback periods reflect a more equitable approach to decarbonization?
Yes. It’s a balance to take a long-term view on protecting frontline communities that experience the first and worst impacts of climate change and improving the buildings where they live, work, and get services, but also safeguarding against the more immediate needs like housing affordability.
While designing our BEPS policy and surveying other programs, we decided early on that we did not want to wholly exempt these more challenged building types, like affordable housing, where in many cases there is a real opportunity to improve not only the building performance but also the comfort and quality for low-income residents.
At the same time, these building owners have real constraints when it comes to funding. Not only have we accounted for this in the policy, but we also have technical assistance available through the Montgomery County Green Bank. The Green Bank’s Technical Assistance Program can help to subsidize energy audits and other building studies, particularly in equity focused properties, and can bring financing to get projects done.
You've successfully navigated a unanimous county council approval for building performance standards regulations. What do you believe were the key communication and coalition-building strategies that enabled this consensus, and how might this county-level approach serve as a model for other jurisdictions grappling with similar energy transition challenges?
Even though benchmarking has been in place for years in dozens of jurisdictions, changing the conversation to beyond benchmarking and requiring improved performance is a major change. I wasn’t around when building codes were first adopted, but I have to imagine the conversation and concerns were similar. BPS policies are new, they affect a wide swath of buildings, and they represent a sea change in not just building to code but also operating and maintaining buildings to a set standard. I think it’s natural to fear and resist something new, but the industry got used to designing and constructing buildings with minimum standards for safety, health, and eventually energy efficiency, and I think that BPS will follow that path.
At the same time, it’s been our north star that our BEPS policy is both ambitious and achievable, accounts for unique circumstances, and recognizes that while we want all buildings to make progress, they are all different – structurally, operationally, financially. It has been absolutely critical to get stakeholder feedback early and throughout this process. We frankly spent years engaging stakeholders. First, before proposing the BEPS law, next creating regulations with input from the BEPS advisory board created by law and finally soliciting more feedback and amending the regulations. Without that I don’t think we would have arrived at a policy that – while not necessarily embraced by industry – is understandable, doable, and will provide massive progress towards our county’s climate goals.
Are there industry resources you’ve used / utilized in your work that you recommend to others working in other jurisdictions contemplating a BPS / BEPS?
It’s amazing how much things have changed since we started working on our County BEPS program 5 or 6 years ago. BEPS is not a one-size-fits-all approach and the elements included, from the building coverage, to timelines, to the performance metric, to alternative compliance options, really depends on many factors unique to each jurisdiction.
The Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) is the first place I’d point others to. They have a roadmap for creating an equitable BPS, a model law, an implementation guide and other resources.
I’m also in touch with many other jurisdictions implementing a BPS and happy to talk to anyone contemplating a policy! The peer sharing and taking lessons learned from others has been invaluable to us.
More from the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection
In the spirit of making building performance data more publicly available, visible, and actionable, Emily and the team at Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection have published a building performance map and performance requirements look-up tool.
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