Tracking Building Energy Use: Comply or Face Fines

Are you aware that in certain areas of the United States commercial facility managers are required to track the energy performance of their buildings?

Increasingly, cities and states across the country are passing legislation requiring facility managers to track and report the energy performance of their buildings or face fines of up to $100 per day.

This requirement aims to reduce energy consumption, and it’s all connected to the EPA’s Energy Star program, where companies can use a web-based reporting tool called Portfolio Manager to report their utility usage.

The goals of the Energy Star program are to protect the environment and reduce energy costs by encouraging the use of energy-efficient products and methods.

Saving energy is particularly important for commercial buildings since they are among the biggest energy wasters. About 30% of the energy used in commercial buildings is wasted, according to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).

Commercial buildings use about 18% of the energy consumed nationwide, and they spend over $100 billion each year in energy costs. And the energy they consume and waste is detrimental to the environment, with 75% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from government and commercial buildings.

As part of the Energy Star program, the Portfolio Manager tool tracks cost and consumption information from a commercial building’s utility bills. The information is used to measure the performance of a building, and compare it against other similar types of buildings.

Through this tracking and comparison process, the building is assigned a rating from zero to 100 (the higher the score the better). A facility manager whose building receives a score above 75 is eligible to apply to have an Energy Star label placed on the building.

Some of the cities that now require Energy Star reporting include New York City, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., according to Bob Zak, the senior vice president of facility solutions at Ecova.

“Several of these cities necessitate reporting for commercial buildings that are larger than a certain size, and each year the building size required to report decreases,” says Zak.

Starting in April 2014, facility managers of commercial and multi-family residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet will be required to report the energy usage data of their facilities. Read the full list of state and local governments that currently require or recommend that buildings use the Energy Star Portfolio Manager.

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