Building Bench-Marking Increases Facility Efficiency
Facility Benchmarking
Good news spreads fast and so do good ideas. That’s what seems to be happening in the arena of Building Energy Benchmarking. At least 21 major cities have launched a required reporting process for building owners of various sizes. It seems to be way modern Mayors are able to prove their “Green”. Smart, in this era of rising energy rates and concern over pollution, benchmarking serves as a Win x 4 solution without too much trouble from building owners. It was piloted in NY City where 3,600 buildings over 50,000 sq feet required reporting of their energy and water usage. The results were released in October in a public forum. Other Major cities to follow quickly behind include Seattle, Philadelphia, Austin, San Francisco, and Washington DC. There are and will be many other cities following suit so if I missed you I apologize. Why not, It creates jobs and will help to point out to building owners, power companies, and city planners areas to concentrate efforts. To assist building owners cities provide support conferences websites and hands on training of the free on line data entry tool called Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Penalties are also established for building owners that do not comply.
When building owners for whatever reason decide to do energy retrofits jobs are created. When Companies reduce energy bills they can survive increasing energy prices, reduce their carbon footprint, and purchase more. Power companies benefit because they are under strict mandate to reduce public energy use, and may now be able to target their efforts and funds towards problem areas. Award systems are being established to recognize building owners that have had success in resource reduction. I think however, the most important benefit will be what happens behind the scenes, as building owners begin to compare their utility usage to other building of similar size and function. Making this data public may help. This idea hits many chords; pride, ego, shame, greed, environmental stewardship, and corporate public relations. Whatever the reason I imagine it’s a very good thing that cities have developed a system and the tools to allow this important information to be compared in one place. It will also be interesting to see what the software designers will be able to do with this data.
