This afternoon, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) announced that their Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 has passed the House and is now headed to President Obama for signature, according to a United States Senate News Release. This bill, which passed the Senate in March, contains both economic and environmentally focused energy efficiency provisions.

The Act includes three provisions that were deemed budget neutral by the Congressional Budget Office:

• Title I establishes a voluntary, market-driven approach to aligning the interests of commercial building owners and their tenants to reduce energy consumption.
• Title II exempts certain electric resistance water heaters used for demand response from pending Department of Energy regulation.
• Title III requires that federally-leased buildings without Energy Star labels benchmark and disclose their energy usage data, where practical.