The balance of power is swinging in Congress and many statehouses. Enthusiasm for climate and energy policy is fading and elected officials are promising massive spending cuts. What does this mean for building energy policy? Let’s take a look.

First, to state the obvious, climate legislation appears dead. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in September that all climate bills are likely off the table until 2012 or later. Bingaman is still pushing his energy bill, which reported out of his committee last year and includes energy retrofit funding for commercial and multifamily property, and recently introduced a tax incentive bill (pdf) that increases the Energy Efficient Commercial Building Tax Deduction to $3 per square foot.

Energy bills aren’t likely to move in the lame duck session before December, but Congress has options in the next session if it wants to go big on building energy. There’s Sen. Harry Reid’s bill (pdf), which includes oil drilling reforms and the Home Star program; Building Star, the $6 billion commercial retrofit incentives package; and the Recovery Through Building Renovation Act, a commercial retrofit financing bill introduced in September. Still, any of those bills would be a heavy lift for legislators.

At the state level, few bills are moving if they have virtually any price tag, which makes a lot of new incentives unlikely. Recovery Act funding is buoying many local energy programs, but that will begin a steep decline as funds expire over the next few years. PACE is tied up by underwriting and repayment concerns from federal loan agencies, and local money for PACE projects is being reallocated.

So where is the action? One area is commercial benchmarking and disclosure policy. By leveraging greater energy transparency to encourage more information and choice in markets, these proposals have in the past secured bipartisan support. They also tend to have low fiscal notes, a big plus. Policies exist in states and cities including California, New York City and Washington, DC, and are pending in at least a half-dozen other jurisdictions.