Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards

NASEO and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offer a bimonthly State Benchmarking and Building Performance Implementation Cohort that is open to State and Territory Energy Offices in all stages of adopting and implementing building energy benchmarking or building performance standard policies. These cohort meetings encourage open exchange and peer sharing between State and Territory Energy Offices, and can elevate recurring priorities and challenges to the appropriate technical assistance providers and partners.

• During this bimonthly meeting, NASEO welcomed the Real Estate Roundtable to present on their recent 20-point policy guide, "Lessons Learned to Shape Fair and Reasonable Building Performance Standards". This discussion featured perspectives from various real estate and building management stakeholders, detailing the industry perspective on best practices for equitably engaging and supporting building owners around complying with benchmarking and building performance standard ordinances.

• NASEO invited State and Territory Energy Offices in all stages of building performance policy adoption or implementation to learn from peers that were awarded the Inflation Reduction Act competitive codes funding to advance the adoption and implementation of innovative building performance standards. State and Territory Energy Offices were encouraged to share about the ideation of their proposals, anticipated engagement with local governments and jurisdictions, and potential barriers or challenges. 

• ​​​​​​​NASEO invited State and Territory Energy Offices to share about their staffing capacity and budget allocations to administer their statewide benchmarking or building performance ordinance. The discussion included details on legislative authorization, average costs for annual program administration, and anticipated changes in staffing capacity needs in subsequent stages of implementing building benchmarking and performance policies. 

• ​​​​​​​NASEO invited State and Territory Energy Offices to participate in a bimonthly State Benchmarking and Building Performance Standard Implementation Cohort, open to states and territories in all stages of building performance policy adoption or implementation. This meeting featured roundtable introductions and a presentation from Isabel Langlois-Romero of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on technical considerations for developing covered buildings lists.

Some basic information is required to get started. First, you will need information about your building, such as its gross floor area, building type and property use. The ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool has 18 broad categories, such as health care, education, entertainment/public assembly, office, food sales, parking and warehouses, along with another 80 property types. See here for a full list. Finally, you need your energy use data. EPA provides a benchmarking starter kit and data collection worksheet to get started.

Benchmarking is the first step to understanding how a building (or portfolio of buildings) uses energy compared to buildings of similar type. With this information, building owners and operators better understand how their buildings use energy and they may use this information to find opportunities to improve their energy performance. In fact, EPA has found that buildings that benchmark energy use achieve average annual energy savings of 2.4%.

• Energy Benchmarking, Rating, and Disclosure for State Governments (State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network)
• The Benefits of Benchmarking Building Performance (Institute for Market Transformation)

Building owners and operators can benchmark their buildings’ energy consumption as well as water use and waste generation using EPA’s no-cost ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool or other commercially available benchmarking tools.

With utility bills, square footage, and other inputs, benchmarking platforms can prioritize buildings for additional assessments and improvements. These may include operational improvements, capital improvements, or both. This is especially useful to help states with defined energy reduction goals to identify and prioritize projects for investment. States without specific goals can still explore the many benefits of benchmarking building performance. Relatively low-cost operational improvements can save the state and taxpayers on maintenance and energy costs.

Portfolio Manager is a widely used online benchmarking platform from the ENERGY STAR program. Portfolio Manager can track more than 100 different metrics pertaining to energy, water, and waste. Most buildings can be scored using Portfolio Manager; those earning an ENERGY STAR score of 75 or better may be eligible for ENERGY STAR certification.

• Use Portfolio Manager (ENERGY STAR)
• ENERGY STAR Resources: Data Access for Benchmarking in Portfolio Manager (ENERGY STAR)

• Comprises a nationwide group of state and local governments that have committed to inclusively design and implement building performance policies and programs in their jurisdictions.

• A Toolkit maintained by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that offers key resources, policy considerations, and strategies for using ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager when implementing state and local benchmarking and building performance standards.

• The full inventory of EPA's tools and resources for benchmarking policies and building performance standards

• A comprehensive list of resources from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on building performance standards, including software tools for program implementation and guidance on target-setting.

• A whitepaper that provides a framework and supporting analysis to help policymakers and commercial and multifamily building stakeholders understand the key differences among performance metrics and choose those best suited to building performance standard policies.

• July 17, 2021
• Slides from this webinar

State and local benchmarking policies have several common features:

• First, benchmarking policies identify the size and type of buildings that will be required to comply with benchmarking policies. Will compliance be required only for state or local government owned buildings, or must privately owned buildings also comply? What is the gross floor area (square feet) threshold for the size of buildings that must comply? Will multifamily residential buildings, hospitals, or certain industrial buildings be included? Many jurisdictions have started with larger buildings, such as those 100,000 square feet or greater, lowering the threshold over several years to 50,000 square feet and then 25,000 square feet.  Some jurisdictions have used a phased approach: for instance, requiring benchmarking first for state or local government buildings only, then expanding the requirement to private buildings. Some have also applied a lower square footage threshold to government buildings first, before applying the threshold to others.
• Second, policies determine whether the benchmarking data (particularly for privately owned buildings) must be publicly disclosed and, if so, the mechanism through which the information will be made available. For example, the District of Columbia Department of Energy and Environment requires that all buildings (public and private) larger than 50,000 gross square feet to measure and report energy and water benchmarking data. This information is then published through an open data portal.
• Third, policies determine which resources must be benchmarked. As State Energy Offices, energy is likely the primary focus, but it is also possible to benchmark water and solid waste streams, which may also be important to state policy goals.
• Fourth, consider working with utilities in your state to enable building owners and operators to implement ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager Web Services, a feature that allows building owners to quickly and easily import energy use data into Portfolio Manager from the utility. See here for a map of states and utilities that have implemented this functionality. See here for a guidance document from EPA for utilities on providing whole-building energy data to enable benchmarking in EPA's ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.
• Finally, policymakers must determine whether building owners will be required to take action based on benchmarking results. In most jurisdictions with benchmarking policies and ordinances, benchmarking is all that is required. However, some communities are beginning to explore strategies that require the owners of poorly performing buildings to make improvements to increase efficiency. Several jurisdictions require periodic building "tune-ups" or "retrocommissioning" to adjust equipment, control, and operations. Additionally, some are implementing building performance standards.

Jurisdictions interested in developing a benchmarking policy can reference the following resources:

• State and local governments webpage (US EPA)
• ENERGY STAR Buildings Support for State and Local Governments (US EPA)
• Building Energy Use Benchmarking (US Department of Energy State and Local Solution Center)
• Benchmarking and Disclosure: State and Local Policy Design Guide and Sample Policy Language (State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network)
• Building Energy Performance Standards (District of Columbia Department of Energy & Environment)
• Energy Benchmarking Toolkit: Helping Cities Plan for Efficiency (Texas State Energy Conservation Office and Houston Advanced Research Center) 

Examples of existing building performance standards or "tune-up"/"retrocommissioning" ordinances:

• Washington Clean Buildings Law (Washington State Department of Commerce)
• Washington, DC Building Energy Performance Standard (District of Columbia Department of Energy & Environment).
• Salt Lake City Commercial Building Benchmarking and Market Transparency (Sterling Codifiers)
• New York City Local Law 97 (City of New York)
• Colorado HB 21-1286 "Energy Performance for Buildings" Law 
• Boston, MA Building Energy Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance 
• St. Louis, MO Building Energy Performance Standards 
• Denver, CO Energy Performance and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Ordinance (Council Bill 21-1310) 
• Chula Vista, CA Building Energy Saving Ordinance