Building Operating Management September 2011 - FacilitiesNet

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rienced substantial growth, with
86 companies offering or planning
to offer such services. During 2010,
these services were responsible for
more than 45 percent of all buildings
benchmarked in the Portfolio Manager
tool. From January through June
2011 alone, more than 12,250 new
buildings representing approximately
1 billion square feet were uploaded
to Portfolio Manager via automated
benchmarking services.
There’s another element of the Energy
Star Buildings program of which
building owners may not be aware:
Energy Star service and product probuildingoperatingmanagement
SEPTEMBER 2011
tion and facility characteristics into a
Portfolio Manager account to benchmark
building energy performance,
assess energy management goals over
time, and identify strategic opportunities
for savings and recognition.
What is less well-known is that
Portfolio Manager can also be used to
track energy costs, water consumption
and carbon emissions, increasingly
important considerations for
many building owners.
Energy Management
To help building owners get started
quickly with Portfolio Manager, EPA
has developed a Benchmarking Starter
Kit. To provide another way to ease
benchmarking with Portfolio Manager,
EPA has partnered with automated
benchmarking service providers. These
service providers can offer customers
the Energy Star’s 1 to 100 energy performance
rating for eligible buildings.
That way, these customers don’t have
to manually upload their own energy
data. Weather-normalized energy intensity
and emissions inventories are
also available for buildings that are not
eligible for an Energy Star score.
In just five years, automated
benchmarking services have expe-
EPA Committed to Keeping Energy Star on Track
More than 21 billion square feet of commercial building fl oor
space, representing close to 30 percent of the market, has
been benchmarked in the Energy Star Portfolio Manager
tool. The Energy Star score has been a valuable tool to motivate
energy-use reductions and to identify top performing buildings.
Recently, however, there have been problems with a little-known
federal database that Energy Star uses. Despite those problems,
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is confi dent that the
Energy Star rating remains a valuable tool for building owners.
That federal database — referred to as CBECS (Commercial
Building Energy Consumption Survey) — comes from a national
survey administered by the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy
Information Agency. The survey draws from a statistically valid
sample of the universe of commercial and institutional buildings and
provides important building and energy data.
Using CBECS, EPA made a startling discovery in the late 1990s:
the gap between the country’s best- and worst-performing buildings
was greater than anyone had previously acknowledged — as large
as tenfold. To help building owners understand how their buildings
compare, EPA launched the Energy Star 1 to 100 scale in 1999 to
provide feedback on where a building’s energy use falls along this
spectrum. That 1 to 100 scale is largely based on data from CBECS.
Unfortunately, DOE recently announced that results from the most
recent survey (2007) would not be published because it had not yielded
valid statistical estimates. At the same time, DOE reported that, as
a result of lower funding levels, it would temporarily suspend work on
the survey scheduled for this year (2011). That means CBECS data
continues to be drawn from the 2003 survey.
Even with questions surrounding CBECS, Energy Star still offers
relevant benchmarks. Here’s why:
1. The 2003 CBECS survey still offers a solid benchmark. The rate
at which new construction and retrofi ts replace building systems is
slow. According to recent studies of actual energy use, new buildings
can still perform more poorly than the CBECS 2003 average.
2. Each time EPA has analyzed the key drivers of energy use for
offi ces, the major drivers were the same: workers, hours of operation,
computers, size, and climate. This consistent result over 12 years
suggests that the methodology underlying the Energy Star score,
which is based on those drivers, remains sound.
3. Because the Energy Star score applies the same calculation to
everyone, it remains a consistent means of placing all buildings on the
same scale.
4. In addition to being an industrywide benchmark, the Energy Star
score can also be used to track energy use of a building over time. Regardless
of the age of the data on which the score is based, the actual
number provides a uniform measure of how performance has changed.
5. While CBECS is used for many Energy Star scales, it is not the
only data used by Energy Star. The scales for hospitals, senior care
facilities, and data centers are all drawn from other surveys. EPA continues
to work with industry to fi nd other nationally representative data
(or means of collecting data) to make Energy Star scales available for
more building types.
6. As more buildings save energy, questions may be raised about
whether it is becoming too easy to earn the Energy Star. If that becomes
a concern, EPA could reset the minimum Energy Star score
higher than 75.
For all these reasons, EPA is confi dent that Energy Star continues
to serve the market effectively. However, if the CBECS 2011
survey is cancelled, EPA will examine data and track trends of buildings
using the Portfolio Manager tool and other surveys to assess
market conditions and evaluate alternatives. It is possible to generate
alternative data sets that are nationally representative, and EPA
is willing to explore this option to ensure that Energy Star remains a
valuable energy management tool.
— Jean Lupinacci is chief, Energy Star commercial and industrial
branch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.