A number of California cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, have adopted relatively aggressive green code to elevate the energy efficiency and sustainability of new construction and remodels above that required by the California Building Standards Code, otherwise known as Title 24.

Officials in San Mateo, a suburb south of San Francisco and just a bit north of Silicon Valley proper, say the city is about to join the green group.

A recent story in the San Mateo County Times notes that while a sustainability campaign launched last year by the city council – San Mateo Acting Responsibly Together, or SMART – has developed a robust public-outreach program, city officials are now ready to move ahead with two initiatives that will address the nuts of bolts of building performance.

Building on SMART

The first such program will offer residential energy audits subsidized in part by $100,000 in federal stimulus funds. City officials estimate they’ll be able to audit 600 single-family homes through the program, although it’s not yet clear how much of the overall audit fee will be subsidized and how much will be paid by homeowners. (The city’s stimulus grants for green programs total $875,000 and will be largely used to install LED streetlights and part of a PV system on the roof of the public library, according to the SMC Times.)

The other SMART initiative will, with eventual approval of the city council, make mandatory the green code that is now voluntary. As currently written, the voluntary code, which went into effect July 1, 2008, follows LEED Silver guidelines for commercial buildings and Build It Green’s GreenPoint Rated guidelines for single-family and multifamily dwellings.

The story adds that the new policy, which will use ranking systems that evaluate green building materials and policies, should be ready for the council to approve in October.