Green Roofs Are Being Considered to Support Denver’s Future Amidst Change

As climate shifts cause complex changes across local, regional, and global environments, residents face new questions about how to keep communities viable into the future.  Denver policymakers help citizens establish long term visions and goals in plans then implemented by enforceable regulations. This is true across Denver City departments, including Community Planning and Development (CPD), where codes and regulations that shape building projects are created and updated. The work embodies the community’s shared priorities, articulated by the Mayor’s Office, City Council, and through focused collaborative partnerships between City and County of Denver (CCD) teams and engaged residents, subject matter experts, and industry representatives. As part of this, green (vegetated) roofs offer potential benefits tied to mitigation of climate change and biodiversity loss, adaptation, resiliency, resource balance, and ecological health. This article provides an overview of various policy initiatives in Denver and how they relate to green roofs. 

Denver’s Comprehensive Plan 2040, adopted through City Council in April 2019 after 18 months of community collaboration, provides high level guidance for supplementary plans and regulations. The Plan envisions a healthy, prosperous Denver community empowered to persist into the future, existing at the intersection of equity, affordability, and environmental health. Current and emerging building project codes, policies, and initiatives steer development in service to this shared ideal, with several offering synergies with green roof opportunities.

Green Buildings Ordinance

Denver’s Green Buildings Ordinance (GBO), adopted in November 2018, replaced the voter initiated Green Roof Ordinance (GRO) approved a year prior. The GRO, then GBO, allowed citizens to vocalize a shared desire for building projects to contribute towards climate change mitigation and the health of the community. Members of CPD and the Denver Climate Action Team (now part of the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency (CASR) led a yearlong community task force to adjust the ordinance to fit the specific environment of Denver. The committee added flexibility to the initial GRO, allowing more building teams to replace exemptions with beneficial, affordable solutions to meet requirements.

Benefits observable almost four years since adoption of the GBO include: several hundred new roofs combating urban heat island effect; over 100 buildings achieving higher than code required energy efficiency; over 30 buildings third party certified as delivering higher overall performance; and approximately 65 buildings offering enhanced green space onsite or through a contribution to the Green Building Fund. Notably, few green roofs have been developed specifically to meet GBO requirements, as other options have proved to be a better fit for project teams. As other regulations advance, building team preferences are projected to shift amongst GBO options. In the context of Comprehensive Plan 2040 goals, green roofs may gain popularity as a GBO option, and contribute towards Denver’s positive ecological evolution, and future livability.

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