Sonoma, CA Building Safety: Green Building Code (2026)

1 of the 2025 California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen) as adopted by the City of Sonoma. Every building must still include the green measures made mandatory in Chapters 4 and 5 of CALGreen, but the city goes further for new construction: newly constructed buildings must also include the prerequisite and applicable elective measures needed to reach Tier 1 status under CALGreen Appendix A4 (residential) or Appendix A5 (nonresidential), with one carve-out. 2 from the mandatory Tier 1 requirement, since those energy provisions are handled instead through the California Energy Code (California Code of Regulations, Title 24, Part 6), which every building covered by CALGreen must still meet in full.

Additions and alterations get a lighter path: they must meet the base Section 301 measures but are not required to reach Tier 1 status under Appendix A4 or A5. 1 is amended to confirm that the energy-efficiency division within Appendix A4 stays entirely voluntary even under the city's Tier 1 mandate. The building official must develop CALGreen application checklists for design and construction use under this section. Because CALGreen is a state-adopted code that the city has locally amended rather than replaced, a Sonoma project's baseline green-building floor still comes from the state code; the local amendment raises that floor to Tier 1 for new buildings specifically, with the stated energy exception.