Tools and Resources

Commercial buildings all use different mixes of energy including electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, district steam, and many others. To evaluate energy performance for these buildings, we have to express all of these different energy types in a single common unit. Source energy is the most equitable unit of evaluation, and enables a complete assessment of energy efficiency.

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.