City Energy Project – March 2018 SAG Newsletter

City Energy Project

AB 802 – Complying with California’s Benchmarking Ordinance

In 2015 the California Assembly passed Assembly Bill 802 (AB 802), taking a big step toward providing building owners and other stakeholders with access to information about their buildings’ energy performance. AB 802 requires that utilities provide whole building, aggregated energy use data to owners of commercial and multi-family residential buildings upon request and requires that owners of buildings larger than 50,000 square feet report their buildings’ energy use to the California Energy Commission by June 1 each year. READ MORE…

This requirement begins in 2018 for buildings with no residential utility accounts and in 2019 for buildings with 17 or more residential utility accounts. Building owners will use ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, a free online tool provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to “benchmark” or track the performance of their buildings against that of other buildings, and to report this information to the Energy Commission. The Energy Commission and its partners are developing resources to help building owners understand the benchmarking and reporting process, and to take the next steps toward improving the performance of their buildings. These resources, including a two-page fact sheet which explains which buildings need to report data, and who to report to, will be posted on the Energy Commission’s Benchmarking Program webpage. Through our media channels IFMA will provide you with additional information on this policy and the support resources available.

Benchmarking policies provide actionable information to the real estate market on how buildings perform so tenants, buyers, and investors can consider energy efficiency when making investment decisions. Benchmarking data is also useful to utilities and local governments for designing programs that give the building sector access to financing, technical expertise, and training. In the U.S., twenty-four cities and one county require annual energy benchmarking for large commercial buildings.