Considering ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager for Your Organization?

Building benchmarking is more critical now than ever before. New York City’s recent Climate Mobilization Act requires buildings over 25,000 square feet to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050, and other cities could rapidly follow suit. As building owners look for ways to track and prove emissions reduction, ENERGY STAR Portfolio ManagerⓇ is one of the first options many think of. 

Whether you’re looking to green your business or simply want to monitor energy consumption, ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager can provide several options for building management. Let’s explore in the ins and outs of ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and the benefits it can provide.

 

What is ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager?

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager is an online tool created by the EPA to enable commercial enterprises, schools, cities, and more to measure and track energy and water consumption, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. On top of all that, it’s free.

Portfolio Manager enables building owners to benchmark their energy usage and set building targets. Tracking over 100 different metrics, it allows you to compare your building’s performance against a yearly baseline, national medians, or similar buildings in your portfolio. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and ENERGY STAR makes this easier than ever before.

 

Who uses it?

Any building or portfolio of buildings can use the service. ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager is the industry-leading benchmarking tool. 40 percent of commercial building space uses it, as well as 35 percent of the Fortune 500. Furthermore, 50 percent of the largest U.S. healthcare organizations, major league sports teams, colleges and universities, and entire cities use Portfolio Manager.

 

How can it help?

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager provides a variety of benefits for firms. The EPA gives buildings a score of 1-100, which in turn allows companies with high scores to gain industry recognition. It can also help verify and track savings and measure your carbon footprint. ENERGY STAR measures greenhouse gas emissions, as well as tracking net emission savings from sustainable purchases.

Portfolio Manager includes a tool to help managers compare energy savings across their portfolio, which is crucial to planning future investments. It also gives the necessary visibility for performance reporting, as well as easy insight into whether your building is following benchmarking laws.

 

Keeping things easy

Building data can be entered into Portfolio Manager in several ways, giving you a variety of options. Data can be entered manually directly into Portfolio Manager, although this is often time-intensive and error-prone. If you use Microsoft Excel to track building performance, you can upload your data as a spreadsheet. Another option is to use an automated data feed to make reporting simple and painless.

Urjanet’s custom integration services can automate the collection, normalization, and delivery of your organization’s monthly utility bill data directly into ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. If you want to streamline your building benchmarking with accuracy and speed, speak to an Urjanet data expert today.

 

You might also like:

• A Guide to Building Energy Benchmarking & Transparency Laws
• Building Energy Exchange & Bright Power Turn Data Into Action
• 3 Ways to Improve Your ENERGY STAR Score

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