Oregon pays building owners to comply early. Here is how the money works.

Most owners read Oregon's Building Performance Standard as a deadline and a threat. It is also, for a while, a check. The state and a federal grant put money on the table specifically to help owners pay for the benchmarking, the audit, and the upgrades the standard will require anyway. The catch is that the money is early-mover money. It rewards the owners who do the work before they are forced to, and it runs out. Half of it already has: the state planning incentive closed its final round in July 2026. The federal retrofit money is still there, for now.

If you are still sorting out coverage and deadlines, start with the deadlines-and-tiers explainer. This piece is about the two incentive programs sitting on top of those deadlines, what each one paid, and how to capture the one that is still open.

Two programs, two different jobs

The single most useful thing to understand is that Oregon runs two BPS incentives, and they fund different halves of the work. Owners lose money by assuming there is only one.

• ECAPP (Early Compliance Action and Planning Program) was the planning money. It paid you for doing the diagnostic work, benchmarking and an energy audit, ahead of your deadline. Its final round has closed.
• BERI (Building Energy Reduction Incentive) is the retrofit money. It helps pay for the actual efficiency measures, the HVAC, controls, and lighting work that gets your building under its target.

One funded the diagnosis. The other funds the cure. And because BERI is built around an audit performed by a state-approved auditor, the audit is not just a line item. It is the thing that unlocks the larger pool of retrofit money, which matters more now that the planning money is gone.

ECAPP: up to $0.85 per sq ft for doing the work early, now closed

ECAPP's final round, Opportunity Announcement #25-083, closed at 5 p.m. on July 10, 2026. ODOE has said it does not plan to open another. That is a direct confirmation from the agency rather than something published on its incentives page, so treat it as ODOE's position and confirm it with them if you are counting on it either way. The terms below are recorded because they set the bar for what early action was worth, and because the same benchmarking and audit work still qualifies you for BERI.

ECAPP was created under HB 3409 and administered by the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE), funded at about $2 million. It paid up to $0.85 per square foot of eligible floor area, with per-building caps that depended on your tier and size:

• $50,000 for Tier 1 buildings 200,000 sq ft and larger
• $35,000 for Tier 1 buildings from 35,000 to under 200,000 sq ft
• $10,000 for Tier 2 buildings

The eligible actions were the planning-phase work: benchmarking and reporting your building, and performing an energy audit. You had to complete them at least one year before your compliance deadline to qualify, and for Tier 1 there was a gate: your calculated energy use intensity had to be at least 15 units aboveyour building's EUI target. That gate is still worth reading as a signal. If your building is far enough over its target that it would have qualified, it is far enough over to be facing a real compliance gap, and the audit is how you find out exactly how big.

The lesson worth carrying forward is the one this program just demonstrated: an incentive that runs in competitive rounds out of a pool this small is a limited resource, not a guaranteed rebate, and it can end without a successor. Owners who benchmarked and audited early collected. Owners who waited for a more convenient round are now paying for the same work themselves.

BERI: the retrofit money, and why the audit is the key

BERI is the bigger and, for most owners, the more valuable program: roughly $12 million, federally funded, aimed at the cost of actually installing efficiency measures. The per-building caps are larger too, up to $100,000 for Tier 1 and $50,000 for Tier 2, and unlike ECAPP it is awarded first-come, first-served until the money is gone. Round 2 opened in June 2026 and runs through December 2026, or until the funds are exhausted. With ECAPP finished, this is the Oregon BPS money that is still on the table.

Here is the part that matters most. BERI requires an energy audit completed by an ODOE-approved Qualified Energy Auditor, and for Tier 1 that auditor also performs a life-cycle cost assessment of the measures. The audit is not paperwork you do after the fact. It is the qualifying document. No approved audit, no BERI check. That is why the audit is the highest-leverage first move in the whole sequence: it is the gate for BERI, and it is the study that tells you which measures actually get you under your target. With ECAPP closed it is also the one piece of the sequence you now fund yourself, which is a reason to do it once and do it properly.

One honest caveat: BERI is federally funded, and federal program funding can shift. Confirm the current round is open and funded with ODOE before you promise an owner the money will be there.

The math that makes moving early pay

Put the carrot and the stick side by side on a single building. Take a 50,000 sq ft Tier 1 building that is over its target. Move now and BERI can contribute up to $100,000toward the retrofit itself, against an audit you pay for once. Owners who moved before July 10 stacked ECAPP's $35,000 cap on top of that for the benchmarking and audit, which is the clearest illustration of what waiting costs: that half of the stack is simply no longer available.

Do nothing and wait, and the Tier 1 penalty is capped at $5,000 + $1.00 per sq ft per year. On that same 50,000 sq ft building, that is up to $55,000 per year, and it recurs. A non-compliance mitigation plan can soften it to no more than 30% of $5,000 plus $0.20 per sq ft per year, but a reduced penalty is still a penalty. The comparison is stark: capture a one-time incentive now for work you have to do anyway, or pay a recurring penalty later for having skipped it. The retrofit half of that incentive is still open. It closes in December 2026, or sooner if the money runs out.

How to apply, step by step

The mechanics are the same benchmarking workflow every building performance standard runs on, so none of it is wasted effort:

• Find your Unique Building ID (UBID) and confirm your gross floor area and tier
• Set up an ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager account with 12 months of utility data and share access with ODOE
• Have a Qualified Personcalculate your weather-normalized EUI and your EUI target using ODOE's target tool
• For BERI, line up the ASHRAE Level 2 audit with an ODOE-approved Qualified Energy Auditor
• Submit to BERI while the round is open and funds remain, which is first-come rather than by a competitive deadline

Steps two through four, the benchmarking, the EUI target, and the audit, are the work I do, with Straven Strategy Group on the Oregon side. You do not have to stand up ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager or go find a Qualified Energy Auditor on your own. That is the point of working with someone who already holds the Oregon Qualified Person, Qualified Energy Auditor, and Qualified Energy Manager credentials and can time the whole sequence to an open funding round.

A few eligibility traps

Before you count on BERI, check the fine print. Buildings that are exempt (or that have filed an exemption) are generally not eligible. There are limits on how many buildings you can submit per application. And because the program runs in rounds with a finite pool, timing is the whole game: the audit has to be complete and the application in while the window is open and funded. ECAPP is the cautionary tale here. Its Tier 1 gate required a calculated EUI at least 15 units above target, its pool was competitive, and the round that closed in July 2026 was the last one. Start the benchmarking and audit before you need the application, not after.

The bottom line

Oregon's deadlines are far enough out that waiting feels free. It is not. Three things move against you every year you wait. Construction costs escalate, so the same retrofit is more expensive in 2029 than in 2026. The incentive pools are finite and lose purchasing power, so the dollars that cover your work today may be smaller or gone later. And every year a building runs over its target is a year of energy savings you never get back, savings that, captured early, behave like an investment compounding in your favor instead of a cost. ECAPP just made that concrete: it was $0.85 per sq ft of help with the planning work, and it is gone. Add the penalty that replaces the incentive once the deadline passes, and the honest comparison is not the same work done later. It is more expensive work, with less help, minus the savings you left on the table, against a penalty. On a net-present-value basis, moving early is the lower-cost path, not just the one that qualifies for a check.

I hold Certified Energy Manager and Oregon Qualified Person, Qualified Energy Auditor, and Qualified Energy Manager standing, so I can run the benchmarking and the ASHRAE Level 2 audit BERI requires, calculate your EUI and target, and get the application in while the round is open. Tell me about your building and I'll tell you what it is eligible for and what I'd do.