One of Georgia's most influential environmentalists has raised a red flag about a little-known legislative proposal that could block city governments from releasing the energy consumption data of buildings.
Atlanta's City Council adopted a new energy policy in 2015 that requires owners of buildings larger than 25,000 to benchmark and report their properties' energy use each year. That data would also be used to complete an energy audit once every decade.
Senate Bill 321, introduced by state Sen. Hunter Hill, would define that sort of consumption data as a "trade secret" to be shielded from the public. And that doesn't sit well with Rutherford Seydel, the environmental attorney and co-founder of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper who also has an ownership stake in the Atlanta Hawks.
He said the proposal was aimed at protecting a “very small portion of the one-percenters” and “really greedy developers.”
“These are people that want to shroud their businesses in secrecy so the public can’t see how sick their building is,” he said Sunday.
Hill and his allies pitch the proposal as a privacy measure and say it doesn’t block governments from mandating utility reporting – just the publication of the info.
The Building Owners and Managers Association of Georgia said the measure "provides a balance between the desire of some government jurisdictions to acquire and monitor utility use while protecting the privacy of those who determine that their data should remain confidential."
“In life, in our great society, we give up certain bits of privacy in everything we do. And we give it up knowingly because it’s for the betterment of the community,” said Seydel. “And that’s what this is all about. this is an unbelievable campaign issue if you keep pushing it.”
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