The Santa Monica City Council just voted to approve an ordinance requiring all new single-family construction in the city to be zero-net energy. The ordinance now goes to the California Energy Commission (CEC) for approval, and if approved, could be law by 2017.
There are various definitions for ZNE buildings but Santa Monica is adopting the definition used in the 2016 California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen), which defines a zero-net-energy building as one in which the value of energy produced on-site by renewable energy resources is equal to the value of the energy consumed annually by the building.