Posted on June 5, 2017 by James B. Witkin
Given the current political climate in Washington, environmental programs most likely to survive unscathed are those that rely on market principles, especially if they are enacted at the state or local level. Sustainability advocates may want to take a closer look at energy benchmarking programs, which pass both of those tests.
The jurisdictions closest to me, the District of Columbia and its close-in neighbor to the north, Montgomery County, Maryland, have adopted mandatory energy benchmarking programs for many commercial buildings. Other cities with similar programs include Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Kansas City and New York City. Many of those jurisdictions began requiring compliance for public buildings, then larger commercial buildings, and finally smaller buildings. In Montgomery County, buildings over 250,000 square feet had to start benchmarking last June; starting June 1, 2017, most buildings over 50,000 square feet must comply. In New York City, buildings larger than 25,000 square feet must benchmark by next May.
Although benchmarking programs vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, generally they require building owners to measure and report information on various types of energy and water usage. Some of that information may come from the owner’s own records; in tenanted buildings, landlords may need to obtain the information from tenants. Often the information is input into software such as the EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager Program, which allows for uniform reporting and effective comparison of the data among buildings. That information is made available to the public.
There are several goals of benchmarking. First, it provides owners with information they may not have had, or understood—as one EPA benchmarking website states, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. By making owners focus on their energy costs, and see how those compare to their neighbors’, they should theoretically make efficient management and upgrade decisions. Second, armed with this information, tenants looking to lease space (or buyers looking to purchase commercial properties) are better able to evaluate what their long term energy costs will be, and can make better leasing or purchasing decisions. Nothing like a lousy score to shame a landlord into making an upgrade decision that ideally is both cost effective and green.
While the programs are still young, some data indicate that they are working. (See the reports issued by the Institute for Market Transformation, and the studies cited by them.) Benchmarking seems like a concept that people on both sides of the isle should be able to support.
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