As a sustainability professional, you know that your building’s energy performance and environmental impact are key indicators of its overall sustainability and competitiveness. Increasingly the sustainability of your real estate assets also drives an increase (or decrease!) in their value for resale. But how do you measure and benchmark these aspects and use them to drive continuous improvement and innovation?
In this article, I will share with you some practical steps and tips on how to measure and benchmark your building portfolio’s energy performance and environmental impact, how to use this information to identify and prioritize areas for improvement, enabling you to set realistic and achievable targets.
Measuring and Benchmarking Your Building’s Energy Performance
Energy performance refers to how efficiently your portfolio uses energy to provide the desired services and comfort levels for its occupants and users. It includes metrics such as energy consumption, generation, and efficiency.
To measure and benchmark your portfolio’s energy performance, you need to:
- Collect and analyze data on your portfolio’s energy consumption, generation, and efficiency. You can use various sources of data, such as utility bills, smart meters, sub-meters, sensors, and building management systems. You can also employ tools such as ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager or BOMA BEST to help you collect and manage your data. Alternatively or in addition, you can use CopperTree Analytics’ Kaizen platform, which can connect to almost any Building Automation System (BAS) without an expensive integration, using its patented data acquisition technology. Moreover, a platform like Kaizen can be used to enhance and compliment other certification and energy management systems as it makes short work of integrating and analyzing data needed to seek and maintain such standards and certifications.
- Calculate and report your portfolio’s energy performance metrics, such as energy use intensity (EUI), energy cost index (ECI), energy star score, and net zero energy status. Tools such as ASHRAE Building EQ or CaGBC Zero Carbon Building Standard can assist to help you calculate and report your metrics. You can also use CopperTree Analytics’ Kaizen Energy platform. Kaizen Energy is a leading example of a sophisticated Energy Information System (EIS). An EIS platform can help your organization to measure its energy performance across your entire portfolio of buildings, set targets for improvement, identify areas of focus, and measure your achievements..
- Compare your portfolio’s energy performance with similar buildings and industry standards. You can use tools such as ENERGY STAR Target Finder or ASHRAE Standard 100-2015 to help you compare your portfolio’s energy performance with other buildings and benchmarks. Energy Information and Fault Detection & Diagnostics systems can also assist by streamlining many of the processes required to collect, analyze and compare your energy performance.
Measuring and Benchmarking Your Portfolio’s Environmental Impact
Environmental impact refers to how your building affects the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon footprint, water consumption, waste generation, and biodiversity.
To measure and benchmark your portfolio’s environmental impact, you need to:
- Analyze Environmental Impacts of your portfolio, such as greenhouse gas emissions, carbon footprint, water consumption, waste generation, and biodiversity. Various sources of data are paramount, such as utility bills, your utility’s emission factors, water meters, waste audits, and biodiversity assessments. Real-time energy and building management system data allows more granularity and time-sensitive information to be collected on an ongoing basis, strengthening your initiatives further.
- Calculate and report your portfolio’s environmental impact metrics, such as greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI), carbon footprint, water use intensity (WUI), waste diversion rate, and biodiversity index. There are resources and tools such as IPCC Guidelines or LEED to help you calculate and report your metrics. A powerful EIS and FDD platform can also assist by transforming your data into meaningful reports, creating advanced calculations for you, and allowing you to rid yourself of the need to manually calculate these complex parameters using spreadsheets, which can be quite time consuming and prone to error.
- Benchmark your portfolio’s environmental impact with similar buildings and industry standards. You can use tools such as GRESB or ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager to help you compare your portfolio’s environmental impact with other buildings and benchmarks. Again, the use of technology to automate and make this analysis ongoing and persistent provides an opportunity for building and portfolio owners to maximize their efficiency and the performance of their sustainability programs.
Using Your Data to Drive Improvement and Innovation
Once you have measured and benchmarked your portfolio’s energy performance and environmental impact, you can use this information to:
- Identify and prioritize areas for improvement and set realistic and achievable targets. You can use tools such as RETScreen or ENERGY STAR Action Workbook to help you identify and prioritize energy and environmental improvement opportunities and set SMART goals. You can also use Kaizen’s FDD platform, which provides an automated way to pinpoints where faults are occurring within your facilities, allowing you to take resolving action immediately and oftentimes remotely, saving you time and valuable resources.
- Implement and monitor improvement actions and track your progress and results. You can use proven systems and approaches, such as the ISO 50001 standard to help you implement and monitor your improvement actions and track your energy and environmental performance indicators. A robust Energy Information System and Fault Detection Platform can also assist with many of the actions required as part of a continuous improvement system.
- Communicate and celebrate your achievements and share your best practices and lessons learned. You can use tools such as ENERGY STAR Certification, LEED Certification, or BOMA Awards to help you communicate and celebrate your achievements and share your best practices and lessons learned.
Conclusion
Measuring and benchmarking your building portfolio’s energy performance and environmental impact are essential steps for improving your overall organizational sustainability and competitiveness. By following the steps and tips outlined in this article, you can collect and analyze data, calculate and report metrics, compare your performance and impact with similar buildings and industry standards, identify and prioritize areas for improvement, set realistic and achievable targets, implement and monitor improvement actions, track your progress and results, and communicate and celebrate your achievements.
I hope you found this article helpful and informative. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment below.
Written By:
Keith La Rose
More By This Author
