Thursday, October 1, 2026
The City of Lacey is facing competing arguments over Home Energy Scores.
Local real estate agents favor an optional path, but climate advocates are challenging both a proposal and how it was presented to the council.
The Thurston County Realtors Association (TCRA) presented its “Voluntary+” proposal at a Lacey City Council work session on Sept. 22 as an alternative to mandatory scoring.
Voluntary+ requires Home Energy Score (HES) education during home sales and a signed acknowledgment from buyers and sellers, but obtaining a score remains optional. An HES is a U.S. Department of Energy assessment that rates a home’s energy efficiency on a 1 to 10 scale.
TCRA Executive Officer Jennifer Chernut said the association shares the city's climate goals, but questions how to spend limited public money.
“A home energy score is a tool; it’s not the goal. Reducing emissions is the goal,” Chernut said. “So the question is whether an HES mandate is the most effective way to achieve that goal.”
TCRA argued public funding could instead pay for energy upgrades. It said the 2025 Energize Thurston pilot program produced 226 heat pump installations, including 176 subsidized for low- and moderate-income households.
TCRA immediate past President Mark Kitabayashi said buyers can request a HES during the inspection period after entering a contract and use the results during negotiations.
Council member Maren Turner said lower income buyers could face costly insulation problems within months of a purchase if no score is required.
"If I were buying a house, I want to be able to compare apples to apples," Turner said. "I'm looking at these five houses, and I want to know what their energy scores are, so I can pretty much forecast my budget."
Kitabayashi responded by saying buyers also cannot compare the roof, furnace or windows of several homes without an inspection.
Council member Ryan Siu worried about buyers with limited funds who may waive inspections and face electricity bills of $400 or $500. He called that outcome inequitable, noting if one buyer's sale falls through, the next buyer may not choose to get a score.
Thurston County and Olympia have adopted the mandatory HES proposal, and Tumwater is considering it, said League of Women Voters of Thurston County President Vallie Needham Huisman during public comment.
Restoring Earth Connection Executive Director Lynn Fitz-Hugh said she supported mandatory disclosure, arguing buyers should receive energy information early enough to compare properties.
Fitz-Hugh later provided The JOLT with a 2025 white paper from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) that showed low participation in voluntary energy rating programs.
In mandatory programs, the white paper found more retrofits and higher sale prices for efficient homes. However, the ACEEE research did not examine Voluntary+.
In an analysis provided to The JOLT, Fitz-Hugh used a 2 percent voluntary rate to estimate six of 288 Tumwater home listings could receive a score under a voluntary program.
TCRA estimated at least $68,000 in known annual expenses for a mandatory Lacey program, including assessment subsidies and third-party tracking and reporting. Kitabayashi said Voluntary+ costs the city nothing because real estate agents provide the education.
Chernut said a broker TCRA spoke with had met people from Hillsboro, Oregon, staff who reported that homeowners there were not making upgrades because they lacked money.
"The people who can make the upgrades will do it, and they'll get more equity in their homes. The people who are most energy burdened, who needs, you know, the retrofits, they're not going to be able to afford it," she said.
Fitz-Hugh called the presentation "sort of unprecedented" during public comment. She later told The JOLT she questioned why TCRA presented its alternative before council members received a staff review.
“From a democratic standpoint, it makes sense why normally ideas about proposals before city council or even alternatives are presented by staff, so there is not bias and the information is accurate,” Fitz-Hugh said. “I have never in eight years of being before our local jurisdictions seen a partisan group being allowed to present this way.”
Mayor Andy Ryder said TCRA reached out to discuss its idea and the council is open to hearing all sides. He noted Voluntary+ requires a city ordinance and no decision is expected until 2027.
Andrea Weddington, who has lived in Lacey for 25 years, compared the need for a requirement to seat belt laws during public comment.
“A home energy assessment is already voluntary. If I were selling my home tomorrow, I could have an energy assessment. So this is a proposal that would essentially do nothing,” she said.
City staff said an informational work session is planned for January 2027, with council consideration of the proposal expected in February 2027.
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RondaLarsonKramer
For the sake of buyers of modest means, I hope the council adopts the Home Energy Score requirement. The Realtors’ argument that Oregon homeowners often did not make energy upgrades because they lacked the money misses an important equity point.
If I’m on a fixed or limited income, I want information *before I buy* that will help me understand what a house is likely to cost me to live in. Whether I can afford to make upgrades later is beside the point. A buyer of modest means may be the person who most needs to know that one house is likely to have substantially higher energy costs than another.
Home Energy Scores aren’t just about persuading homeowners to make upgrades. They give buyers information about the ongoing costs of the home they are considering buying. From an equity standpoint, withholding that information doesn’t help lower-income buyers. It hurts them.
2 days ago Report this
sanecenter98501
Get real, Rhonda! The median home price in Thursday County is now $545,000, with a qualifying income of upwards of $120,000. Low income or fixed income. people aren't buying homes. In fact, hardly anyone's buying homes right now with 7% interest rates! The most energy burdened population are renters. The home energy score does not apply to stacked multi family apartments, manufactured homes, standalone condos, rental houses… so really who will we be helping?
Yesterday at 12:58 AM Report this
36098501
I have far more confidence in the ability of people to make these decisions on their own. It is such a condescending argument that this is beyond peoples ability to manage on their own.
Feel free to standardize what is defined as a Home Equity Score.
The last thing we need locally is more bureaucracy to add in yet another layer of costs to housing. The due diligence period of a home transaction is there for a reason.
Adults buying homes are perfectly capable of evaluating utility bills and home inspections without government hand-holding. These groups need to stop using "equity" as yet another convenient shield to justify endless, and expensive, government intervention and regulatory creep where it doesn't belong.
Previous JOLT article on the HME topic with an excellent summary in the comments by Yeti1981
https://www.thejoltnews.com/stories/tumwater-city-council-refers-home-energy-score-ordinance-to-equity-commission,30288
Yesterday at 5:05 AM Report this
JW
Local politicians are so two-faced. Complain out of one side of their mouth about the cost of housing and then out the other side continue to push more and more regulation and bureaucracy to jack the price up even more.
Yesterday at 12:52 PM Report this
William M
The process is also highly inaccurate. Olympia sends our energy usage report monthly, and even when we're away for a month and the only things left plugged in are our security cameras and refrigerator, the report says we used more energy than 85% of homes our size.
I spoke to a couple of local contractors, and they said they ignore the reports because they're known to be inaccurate. If you're planning on selling your house down the road, the last thing you want is an inaccurate assessment of your energy usage.
Yesterday at 3:57 PM Report this
MHoraney
Have the bodies promoting this Energy Score told us WHAT *the goal* actually is?
As Jennifer Chernut said "A home energy score is a tool; it is not the goal."
Improving energy efficiency of homes is a truly nice idea, but ... what is the GOAL?
City/county officials may pretend that "the goal" is getting a certain percentage of participation by sellers in having the audits done, but that does not actually necessarily lead to energy savings.
It can mean - as it does in Oregon - that the audits were done and then ... crickets.
What we should be seeing, even at this point in what now is looking more like the necessary preliminary discussion about the program, is a strong, solid goal such as: "By the year 2045, all homes that have undergone the Score will have been upgraded to improve their energy efficiency by X%."
Is it somewhere in the documents and I can't find it?
Without a solid goal about energy saved that is clear and can be seen NOW, this plan does little to nothing EXCEPT confuse the public and aggravate sellers and owners.
This plan should be put on pause and a LOT of work done before it comes back to any of the three cities and the county.
Among the work is solicitation of opinions and ideas of the owners of homes who are most definitely directly affected by this program. The Climate Mitigation Collaborative DID NOT include owners of homes in the set of focus groups it conducted about this plan in 2024.
WHY NOT?
Focus groups were made up of real estate professionals, builders and others who create housing.
But not one owner of one home -- who could offer insight and information about the reaction to the plan, ideas to help improve it and, even, get it over a finish line -- was part of one of those groups.
All of the parties need to do better on this and it needs to be taken off all agendas for the time being.
Yesterday at 6:38 PM Report this