ENERGY STAR Portfolio ManagerⓇ + Data Automation: A Perfect Duo

Despite the Trump administration declaring their plan to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement a large majority of US corporations have publicly declared their commitment to sustainability initiatives. In a study conducted by Urjanet and Lucid, 94.3 percent of companies plan to either increase or maintain their commitment to sustainability. Improving energy management is one of the top focus initiatives of these corporations. While energy management remains a top priority for many organizations, many energy managers are struggling to track their data.

The EPA aimed to foster energy sustainability with the release of ENERGY STAR Portfolio ManagerⓇ which allows corporations to track their energy and water consumption as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The introduction of this online tool helps energy managers benchmark their energy usage across facilities, as well as set up energy targets for new buildings. This industry leading tool has already helped over 40 percent of all U.S commercial buildings measure their data for better energy management. Let’s go into further detail on how ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager benefits corporations and how you can work with it:

Benefits of ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager

1. Gain Industry Recognition

The EPA gives buildings an ENERGY STAR score of 1-100, taking into account a building’s assets, operations and people inside the building. This scoring allows corporations to evaluate how their buildings perform in comparison to similar ones nationwide, with a score of 75 or more indicating top performance.

2. Measure Your Carbon Footprint

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager also allows you to measure your greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the tool allows you to track net emission savings from green power purchases (renewable energy sources and technology).

3. Set Investment Priorities

Included in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager is a financial tool that allows managers to compare energy savings across your portfolio. This information helps you plan your investments in the future and evaluate if facility upgrades are yielding a beneficial return on investment.

4. Verify and Track Savings

The results from reports generated in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager can be shared with various tenants, owners, buyers and renters to help foster reporting transparency and manage energy use.

5. Report on Performance

Lastly, this industry leading tool gives you the visibility to see if your building is following benchmarking laws and the transparency to easily update management on the energy usage of buildings. Additionally, further insight can be gained by running custom reports for more detailed information.

Methods of Data Entry

With thousands of facilities and buildings comes a plentitude of data sets that need to be entered into the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager system. This is a hurdle that most if not all energy managers face in creating a successful energy management program. Data can be inputted one of three ways:

1. Manual Data Entry

For each of the buildings or facilities, there is the option to individually input the data into the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager system. This method might be feasible for small companies, but for large corporations with hundreds of buildings, manual data entry becomes costly and time consuming.

2. Spreadsheet Upload

If data is being compiled into an excel database, there is the option to automatically upload the sheets into the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager system. This method is slightly more efficient but is still not feasible for large corporations or organizations working with many accounts or facilities.

3. Data Automation

Energy management software that provides data automation like Urjanet can be integrated and used in conjunction with the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool. This software automates the collection, normalization, and delivery of a building’s utility data into the ENERGY STAR tool and helps corporations reduce costs and increase their operational efficiency. Data automation proves to be the best option for corporations with hundreds of buildings in order to efficiently compile data into one database.

Adopting the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool can prove to be extremely beneficial for large corporations all over the world. Already, 50% of the largest healthcare systems, sports facilities, universities and cities have adopted this energy management tool. The combination of the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool to measure data with a data automation solution like Urjanet can help simplify and streamline the data aggregation process and produce a concise and accurate database as a result. This process helps large corporations reduce costs, increase efficiency, and manage their energy programs at the same time.

Find out more about simplifying compliance and creating value for your organization with ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.

Related Resources:

• 3 Ways to Improve Your ENERGY STAR Score
• Solutions Sheet: Utility Data for Sustainability
• Solutions Sheet: Urjanet and ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager®

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