ENERGY STAR Score for Multifamily Housing in the United States

The ENERGY STAR Score for Multifamily Housing applies to buildings that contain 20 or more residential living units. The objective of the ENERGY STAR score is to provide a fair assessment of the energy performance of a property relative to its peers, taking into account the climate, weather, and business activities at the property. To identify the aspects of building activity that are significant drivers of energy use and then normalize for those factors, a statistical analysis of the peer building population is performed. The result of this analysis is an equation that will predict the energy use of a property, based on its experienced business activities. The energy use prediction for a building is compared to its actual energy use to yield a 1 to 100 percentile ranking of performance, relative to the national population.

• Property Types. The ENERGY STAR score for multifamily housing applies to residential buildings that contain 20 or more residential living units. The score applies to individual buildings as well as properties with multiple buildings.
• Reference Data. The analysis for multifamily housing is based on survey data from an industry survey conducted by the Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”).
• Adjustments for Weather and Business Activity. The analysis includes adjustments for:
  • Number of Units
  • Number of Bedrooms Per Unit
  • Weather and Climate (using Heating and Cooling Degree Days, retrieved based on Zip code)
  • Percentage of units located in Low-Rise buildings
• Release Date. The ENERGY STAR score for multifamily housing was released in September 2014.

 This document presents details on the development of the 1 - 100 ENERGY STAR score for multifamily housing properties. More information on the overall approach to develop ENERGY STAR scores is covered in our Technical Reference for the ENERGY STAR score, available at www.energystar.gov/ENERGYSTARScore. The subsequent sections of this document offer specific details on the development of the ENERGY STAR score for multifamily housing