commercial building benchmarking Archives

Apr 10

Benchmarking Flaws and Best Practices; Pot Growers Discover Sunshine

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant No Comments

The City of Chicago recently issued its annual report on commercial building benchmarking. I pick on Chicago because (1) its upper-Midwest location has a climate like that of many of our readers, and (2) because it uses ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager, which I addressed several times before. With Portfolio Manager, everybody seems to get a trophy, and results are troublesome to me. Also, for reference, I published this post last fall, pointing out the failures of energy codes to move the energy intensity needle. Using data from the Energy Information Administration, that post showed that buildings built in the past…

Feb 09

Love0

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager Benchmarks Lake Wobegon

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments

Not that my opinion is worth anything, but the results of Chicago’s 2014 commercial building benchmarking report are excellent. The report indicates that most of the 348 buildings that were benchmarked for the study were benchmarked using ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager. The cross-cutting data provided reveals interesting facts that are not expounded upon – but I will. The first thing is rather stunning. The median ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager score for 348 buildings, accounting for 260 million square feet of building space, was/is 76. By definition, the median score of all buildings in the Portfolio Manager database is 50. The…