Tools and Resources

The ENERGY STAR Score for Senior Care Communities applies to buildings that house and provide care and assistance for elderly residents. 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 ENERGY STAR score provides 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. Stand-alone swimming pools are not eligible to earn the ENERGY STAR score. However, because swimming pools are a common energy-intensive amenity at other commercial building types (i.e., hotels and schools), the ENERGY STAR score does make adjustments to accommodate for the presence of swimming pools.

The ENERGY STAR Score for Warehouses applies to buildings that are used to store goods, manufactured products, merchandise, or raw materials, including non-refrigerated warehouses, refrigerated warehouses, and distribution centers. 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.

The ENERGY STAR Score for Wastewater Treatment Plants applies to primary, secondary, and advanced treatment facilities with or without nutrient removal capacity. 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 ENERGY STAR Score for Worship Facilities applies to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, meetinghouses, or any other buildings that primarily function as a place of religious worship. 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.

When you benchmark your building in Portfolio Manager, one of the key metrics you’ll see is energy use intensity, or EUI. Essentially, the EUI expresses a building’s energy use as a function of its size or other characteristics.

For most property types in Portfolio Manager, the EUI is expressed as energy per square foot per year. It’s calculated by dividing the total energy consumed by the building in one year (measured in kBtu or GJ) by the total gross floor area of the building.

The climate of the area where your property is located and the annual fluctuations you experience in weather conditions can affect how much energy you need to operate your buildings. Portfolio Manager includes metrics designed to incorporate these effects and help you understand your energy performance. These procedures rely on temperature data collected by weather monitoring stations and published by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

EPA’s 1 - 100 ENERGY STAR score is an external benchmark for assessing the performance of commercial buildings. The ENERGY STAR score, expressed as a number on a simple 1 - 100 scale, rates performance on a percentile basis: buildings with a score of 50 perform better than 50% of their peers; buildings earning a score of 75 or higher are in the top quartile of energy performance.

When establishing energy performance targets early in a project’s design stage, exact fuel mix and energy costs are often not known. In these cases, Portfolio Manager and Target Finder will provide an estimated fuel mix and energy cost to help you assess how to reach your target performance level. Reference this 7-page document for information about using Portfolio Manager and Target Finder to estimate fuel mix and energy cost.

The energy used in commercial buildings results in significant emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) linked to global climate change, making buildings an important part of your GHG inventory. In order to help you assess the emissions footprint associated with your energy consumption, Portfolio Manager incorporates a number of metrics to quantify these emissions.