Benchmarking: How Does Your Building Stack Up?

Elisa Wood
June 11, 2012 | 3 Comments

By David Pospisil, Guest Blogger, Energy Efficiency Markets

Energy benchmarking can help you better understand your commercial property’s energy use and monitor performance over time. It allows for comparisons among similar building types and helps identify which ones could operate more efficiently.

The Environmental Protection Agency and its ENERGY STAR® Program offers a free online tool called Portfolio Manager that allows users to track and assess building energy consumption for a single building or an entire portfolio. Portfolio Manager can help users comply with local energy laws, set investment priorities, identify under-performing buildings, verify efficiency improvements and receive EPA recognition for superior energy performance.

If you have already been through the benchmarking process, are you on track to increase your building’s energy performance rating this year? While benchmarking helps you understand the current state of your building’s performance, an energy audit can help you identify and prioritize opportunities for substantial energy and operational savings.

Not all energy audits are equal however. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recognizes three levels that vary in scope and cost:

Walk-Through Assessment (Level 1): This is the least costly of the three levels. It provides an energy bill analysis and possibly a brief survey of the facility. Subsequently, the report outlines no-cost and low-cost opportunities.
Energy Survey and Analysis (Level 2): A more detailed analysis taking into consideration the owners’ operations and maintenance, constraints and economic factors. The final report may include potential capital-intensive energy efficiency opportunities.
Detailed Analysis (Investment Grade Audit) (Level 3): This analysis provides a higher degree of data collection, monitoring and analysis and focuses on capital-intensive opportunities. The report usually includes detailed analysis on project cost and savings and may include a timeline for implementation for each measure.

Benchmarking and energy analysis work together as integral steps of a business’ energy management plan. The benchmarking process can help you identify your building’s performance rating and an energy audit can help you effectively evaluate the energy-saving opportunities so you can understand where your investment in sustainability will have the greatest impact.

Incentives from government and/or utility-based programs may be available to help pay for the cost of an energy audit, as well as energy efficiency upgrades. For example, the Con Edison Commercial and Industrial Energy Efficiency Program offers:

Payment of up to 50% of costs, with a cap of $67,000, for a Level 3 energy audit
Rebates for high-efficiency electric and gas equipment including lighting fixtures, LED exit signs, chillers, packaged heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems, motors, water and steam boilers
Performance-based custom incentives for installing high-efficiency equipment or energy-saving solutions not eligible for equipment rebates

Check to see what funding may be available in your area.

Join the discussion on LinkedIn (Con-Edison-Commercial-Industrial), Facebook (ConEd Green Team C&I), Twitter (ConEd Green Team C&I) and YouTube (ConEd Green Team C&I).

David Pospisil is Program Manager of Con Edison’s Commercial & Industrial Energy Efficiency Program, New York, NY.

Lead image: Checklist via Shutterstock

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

3 Comments

Patrick O'Leary
June 19, 2012

David, I got an error message! I looked at the homepage, but could not follow your lead that way, either. Can you take another shot at it?

David Pospisil
June 19, 2012

Patrick, I highly recommend you explore the ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager site to learn more about their benchmarking process. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=evaluate_performance.bus_portfoliomanager They offer several tools to get you started including a Benchmarking Starter Kit.

Patrick O'Leary
June 13, 2012

David, Does this system compare buildings to each other, or to some standard? Is that standard defined on the basis of the maximum energy that the given area could collect and then utilize? Are daylighting and solar thermal systems part of any of the equations? Futura Solar is reviving Sawtooth roofing, with additional solar benefits, for low profile commercial buildings (US patent 6,912,816, PCT pending). In addition to the interior daylighting (no interior solar loading) Futura adds a 2 pass air heater to intercept & harvest the solar loading, drawing air initially fron the top of the interior thermocline. This feature adds air handling, space conditioning & heat recovery as incidentals. The absorber plate, of the air heater, can be painted black or can host PV (amorphous works best), SWH or PV/Thermal, as specified. All of which reduces Gen'l & Admin energy expense, and may contribute to Direct Process energy. Of course, solar thermal air is still soooo boring. No solar mass, etc, etc, etc.

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Elisa Wood

Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose work appears in many of the industry's top magazines and newsletters. Her blog on energy efficiency appears on more than 100 sites and has been picked up by the New York Times and Reuters. She...