Building Energy Use Benchmarking Ordinance

Under the passed ordinance, buildings over 50,000 square feet would be required to benchmark energy data annually; share this data with the city; and verify the data every three years. The specifics are:

• Each year, buildings energy consumption data must be entered into Portfolio Manager, administered by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

• Following an initial setup process, Portfolio Manager will automatically send energy use data to the city each year.  The ordinance would also allow the city to publicly disclose the energy performance of individual buildings.

• The energy consumption data received from individual buildings will be verified every three years by a licensed architect, engineer or other professionally certified class recognized by the city.

Submission of initial energy consumption data would be required in accordance with the below schedule:

• Commercial buildings ≥ 250,000 square feet would report June 2014

• Commercial buildings ≥ 50,000 square feet would report June 2015

• Residential buildings ≥ 250,000 square feet would report June 2015

• Residential buildings ≥ 50,000 square feet would report June 2016

 
The first year’s data will never be disclosed publicly for any building. However, information will be disclosed for each building group starting in the second year.
 
FirstService Energy Services
 
FirstService Residential will manage benchmarking clients’ data from start to finish through our affiliate, FirstService Energy, and their data engineers and licensed engineers. We will be managing data through our current technologies: Jenark, industry-leading accounting software, and FirstService Energy’s proprietary benchmarking database. These resources will allow us to ensure compliance of the city’s benchmarking mandate, and in addition, will be at no additional cost to our clients.
 
FirstService Energy already successfully manages over 1000 buildings in their proprietary database, and has pushed more than 400 into the Energy Star Portfolio Manager Tool. The buildings using Portfolio Manager have experienced a 13% decrease in energy consumption and costs. Not only will FirstService Energy be benchmarking our clients’ energy use, but because they are monitoring and compiling data they will automatically audit utility charges and fees. In addition, we plan on having staff available for conducting retrofit audits, so our clients can easily obtain unbiased opinions on low to mid-level solutions.
 
We want to make the process easy for our clients. This shouldn’t be a headache; it should be an opportunity to drive down expenses, raise awareness, and benefit our community overall.