City of San José
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Energy: Commercial & Industrial Building Energy Use
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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?
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Natural gas usage in buildings accounts for 18% of San Jose’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the most recent (2024) communitywide inventory. Therefore, building electrification will be a key strategy for San José to reach carbon neutrality.
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Burning natural gas for water and space heating, on-site electricity generation, manufacturing, and other processes generates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Natural gas systems also leak methane during production, storage, and distribution. Methane is over 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, making it a particularly urgent target for reduction. We must reduce, and eventually eliminate, natural gas use in our buildings to address climate change.
What is the City doing to make progress on this indicator?
Completed
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Electrify San José: Framework for Existing Building Electrification (adopted 6/14/22)
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Building reach code incentivizing all-electric buildings (adopted for 2019 and 2022 building code cycles)
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Building Performance Leaders voluntary energy reduction program for commercial buildings and educational institutions (2020-2021)
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Updated Natural Gas Prohibition Ordinance for all new construction (adopted by City Council 12/1/20, on moratorium)
- Silicon Valley Energy Watch energy efficiency programs (2004-2020)
In Progress / Ongoing
- San José Clean Energy’s Peak Rewards demand response programs for businesses (2023-present)
- The Building Performance Ordinance’s Beyond Benchmarking component requires covered commercial and industrial buildings that do not meet energy efficiency standards to perform an audit, undertake retrocommissioning, or make energy efficiency upgrades (2023-present)
- The Climate Smart Challenge platform includes actions that can be taken in the office to reduce energy usage (2025-present)
- Energy efficiency resources for commercial buildings, including:
ABOUT THE DATA
Sources
Data on natural gas use by commercial and industrial customers in San José are provided by PG&E. Data represents total citywide natural gas use by both commercial and industrial customers for a given calendar year. Natural gas use by institutional customers is not included.
Data on commercial and industrial building square footage come from the Santa Clara County Tax Assessor’s Office.
Energy use intensity (EUI) is calculated by dividing total citywide commercial and industrial natural gas use by total citywide square footage of commercial and industrial building space for a given year.
Limitations
The County Tax Assessor dataset is missing some needed data for a small percentage of properties. These properties were excluded from analyses.
Commercial energy use may have been unusually low in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place orders.
Last updated
March 2026