When considering energy efficiency upgrades, facility managers are often faced with the question of how specific properties compare with others. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star Program now offers a useful program for such benchmarking needs. Designated the Energy Star Benchmarking Tool, this program assesses a facility’s comparative performance against a standardized goal for energy performance.
This Internet-based performance measurement tool catalogs all energy uses in a building, calculates energy intensity, and benchmarks the building’s energy performance against all similar-use buildings in the United States. Each building is assigned a benchmark score from 0 to 100, and this ranking can be used to compare one building against another, a portfolio of buildings, or all other similar-use buildings in the United States.