Benchmarking Information for Utility Customers
Getting a handle on current and past energy use is a critical first step for any energy management program and can be done through a process known as benchmarking. ENERGY STAR benchmarking tools can be used by your customers to set a baseline for energy consumption, compare performance to similar buildings, and analyze trends.
Your customers can use benchmarking results to identify energy-efficiency improvements that align with your program offerings, pinpoint under-performing buildings, set investment priorities, and receive EPA recognition for superior energy performance. More importantly, with all of this information in one place, your clients will have the tools to develop a continuous energy management plan.
For commercial buildings
ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager is widely used across the commercial buildings market and enables customers to track and assess energy, water, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions across entire portfolios of buildings, all in a secure online environment.
- Learn more about EPA’s popular, industry-accepted ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.
- Identify what data is required to benchmark through Portfolio Manager.
- Provide whole-building energy consumption data to your customers via Portfolio Manager web services.
- Encourage your customers to pursue ENERGY STAR certification for top-performing buildings and/or Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR recognition for design projects. Consider offering financial incentives or tying these designations to your energy-efficiency program offerings.
For industrial plants
EPA provides Energy Performance Indicators (EPIs) to help benchmark industrial plant energy performance. EPIs are external, industry-specific benchmarking tools that score a plant’s energy performance and compare it to that of similar plants in its industry within the U.S. These statistical models generate an energy performance score (also known as EPA’s 1 – 100 ENERGY STAR score) on a scale of 1 to 100 using actual plant data—not engineering projections—and evaluate a plant in terms of energy per unit of production at the whole-plant level. For eligible plants that score 75 or higher using the relevant EPI, EPA distinguishes these top performers with ENERGY STAR certification.
- Learn more about Energy Performance Indicators.
- Encourage your customers to pursue ENERGY STAR certification for plants. Consider offering financial incentives or tying these designations to your energy-efficiency program offerings.
- For industrial customers with properties that cannot use EPIs to assess performance, EPA offers the Energy Tracking Tool (and a complementary Quick Start Guide), a simple means for tracking energy performance over time and progress toward meeting goals. The tool enables users to track monthly or annual energy data for facilities and the entire organization, reporting out custom energy intensity metrics, such as MMBtu/unit of production, and can support participation in the Challenge for Industry.
Hundreds of thousands of buildings use Portfolio Manager to track their energy use. EPA has compiled our observations and statistics from this veritable gold mine of data with the hope that this information will help inform and advance the industry. This ongoing series of original research and analysis on data characteristics across the country is known as DataTrends and can provide valuable insight by sector or broadly across the country.