ENERGY STAR Benchmarking: What is It & Why is It Important?

Although up to 30% of building energy is wasted, you can’t know where your facility stands without historical data. ENERGY STAR benchmarking turns your raw information into a baseline, making it easy to compare, understand, and explain energy use.  

But your benchmark is only as good as the data you put into it, and manual entry can be tedious. Fortunately, tools exist to automate the process and ensure you’re working with the latest, error-free information.

Benefits of ENERGY STAR Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the first step toward realizing a 10-30% energy cost reduction. For example, in Chicago, 211 ENERGY STAR certified buildings achieved energy savings of $87.9 million in 2020. Building owners and facility managers also benefit from:

·  Additional savings as lower energy costs also decrease operational expenses

·  Finding what fuels energy use and using that data to prioritize capital improvements

·  Leveraging benchmarking information as a diagnostic tool to discover inefficiencies

·  Qualifying for green building certification

·  Staying competitive through awareness of industry insights

Furthermore, building owners and facility managers with multiple sites can use benchmarking to develop best practices at high-performing locations. Then, they can replicate those methods in other buildings while using data sets to target locations for improvement.

What is ENERGY STAR Benchmarking?

ENERGY STAR benchmarking measures your building’s energy and water efficiency. The Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) provides baseline data from similar educational, medical, or professional sites.

Depending on your location, you may find additional information provided by utility companies using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR® website.

To benchmark your property, you need basic information, such as:

·  Total gross floor area (GFA) of your property

·  Construction date of your property

·  Number of buildings

·  Occupied and operational portion of your GFA

·  Outdoor landscape or garden areas using irrigation

·  12 back-to-back months of energy data

However, each building type requires answers to property-specific questions, such as if your location has onsite laundry facilities, medical laboratories, or a computer lab. With this data, you can reveal what drives energy use and adjust your metrics to account for fluctuations in production or occupancy levels, or weather conditions.

Overcome Benchmarking Challenges

Selecting the right data, collecting information, and deriving insights are three challenges facility managers and mechanical services providers face. Benchmarking is a useful tool, but it’s a score or rating, not an action plan. Moreover, the numbers alone aren’t helpful without context.  

The challenge of big data is how to break down information into actionable steps. It’s no longer enough to look at performance levels every year. Instead, organizations must continually assess energy use and analytics to assure ongoing improvements.

Fortunately, tools like BOB, the world’s first Building Optimization Broker, are designed to reduce barriers and assist with benchmarking to:

·  Eliminate time spent on manual data entry

·  Avoid squinting over hard-to-read utility bills

·  Create visual representations of energy use by fuel source

·  Offer clients an easy-to-read utility bill analysis

·  Develop insights into energy usage and trends

·  Build a business case to support replacements or repairs

·  Automate monthly reports for your ENERGY STAR Portfolio

·  Maintain compliance with energy regulations

Next Steps: Discover Solutions for ENERGY STAR Benchmarking

As the focus on carbon footprints and energy consumption increases, companies can position facilities to meet standards while gaining a competitive edge. It’s vital to build an efficient data collection and analytic process. Meet BOB to learn how it can support your performance goals.

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