Permit Office (AHJ)
Denver Community Planning & Development (CPD) — Development Services / Building Inspection
Denver, CO · Licensed Professional Engineering
Energy compliance handled as engineering, not paperwork — documentation matched to the exact code edition your permitting jurisdiction enforces.
Denver enforces the 2021 Denver Energy Code, one of the most stringent in the country, with a defined trajectory toward net-zero-energy new construction — so COMcheck-style documentation targets that edition plus Denver amendments, not a generic 2021 IECC. The Green Buildings Ordinance requires cool roofs plus a solar, green-roof, or energy alternative on larger buildings, and Energize Denver imposes benchmarking and performance targets on existing buildings. In cold-dry, high-solar 5B, the best moves are a tight high-performance envelope, heat recovery, electrified heat pumps, and economizers, coordinated as one package with Xcel Energy incentives.
Code adoptions and local amendments change on multi-year cycles. The state source verification date is 2026-07-28; we verify the governing editions with Denver Community Planning & Development (CPD) — Development Services / Building Inspection at project kickoff.
Plan review runs through Denver's online permitting system (the E-Permits / Denver Development Services portal) with published commercial review timelines and an expedited option for qualifying projects. Denver reviews building, zoning, and fire concurrently on larger projects, and green-building and energy-code reviews are integrated into the commercial package, so early coordination with CPD helps sequence the reviews.
Denver adopts and amends the I-codes as a home-rule city, so the Denver Building and Fire Code differs from surrounding jurisdictions on the same base year. The city's Green Buildings Ordinance requires cool roofs plus solar, green roof, or energy/renewable alternatives on larger buildings, and Energize Denver benchmarking and performance requirements apply to existing commercial and multifamily buildings above size thresholds.
Xcel Energy applies commercial demand charges and offers time-of-use and demand-response programs; large new services and electrification-driven loads can carry meaningful transformer and interconnection lead times. Natural gas is also Xcel, and water is Denver Water, whose tap-fee and capacity requirements factor into project budgets and site planning.
Denver construction is driven by aerospace and defense, healthcare and the Anschutz medical campus, life sciences, downtown and RiNo/River Mile mixed-use and multifamily development, data centers, and transit-oriented projects along the RTD lines. Sustainability policy — Energize Denver and the Green Buildings Ordinance — is a defining feature of the commercial market.
Reviewed 2026-09-11. Code editions and local requirements can change; confirm the current requirements with the authority having jurisdiction before design.
With a team of licensed PEs and a multi-discipline engineering team, we're ready to take on projects of any size — and we turn quotes around fast. Send us your scope and get a clear proposal: deliverables, timeline, and fee.
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