Have you ever purchased an appliance or a product that had an Energy Guide label? Even if you haven’t, I bet you have seen one. The Energy Guide label’s purpose is to provide potential buyers with an estimate of annual energy consumption and a sense of where the product ranks compared to others in terms of annual energy cost.

Did you know buildings can get a similar rating based on their energy performance? That’s right! You can identify if your building is performing better or worse compared to similar buildings across the United States. The question is how do you do that?

First, you will need to create a profile for your building on the EPA’s free online energy management and tracking tool, ENERGY STAR®. Here, you can generate a data collection worksheet based on the type of property (multifamily, commercial, etc.) and follow the simple steps to create your own Portfolio Manager profile. Once you have entered all your basic building details and your annual energy data, the Portfolio Manager will generate an ENERGY STAR score for your building!

The ENERGY STAR score is expressed on a median scale of 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater energy efficiency. A building or facility with a higher ENERGY STAR score is considered more energy-efficient than others in its category. For example, if your building received a score of 75 then your building is more energy efficient than 75% of similar buildings nationwide.

Several U.S. states, cities, and counties have adopted mandatory building energy benchmarking policies for existing buildings. Figure 2 shows cities that have made benchmarking of public, commercial, and/or residential buildings mandatory

Measuring and evaluating energy performance via benchmarking is a crucial first step in identifying opportunities and improvements that increase energy efficiency.

For more information, refer to the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager benchmarking starter kit.