Understanding Energy Star Scores: A Guide for Building Owners and Operators

Introduction

In an increasingly climate-aware market, energy efficiency has gone from an aspiration to a key metric for benchmarking property value and operational costs. For commercial, multifamily, industrial, and other building owners and operators, understanding and managing your Energy Star score is a core component of optimizing your energy efficiency. This guide serves as your starting point in comprehending and maximizing the way in which you leverage your Energy Star as a KPI for boosting your building’s performance.

For a quick overview, check out our video below. Keep reading to learn more. 

What is an Energy Star Score and How is it Calculated?

The Energy Star score is a widely adopted rubric for energy efficiency, and it standardizes the way in which the market and regulatory agencies assess the energy performance of buildings.

The score is generated through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Portfolio Manager, a system of intake that performs a calculation behind the scenes to compare your building’s energy use to similar structures across the country.

It incorporates operational hours, occupancy, and energy consumption data through the inputs your team submits through Portfolio Manager, and it yields a score between 1 and 100. This represents your performance percentile, with a score of 50 representing average performance, while scoring above 75 indicates that your building could be eligible for Energy Star certification.

Interpreting Your Energy Star Score

Your Energy Star score serves as a point in time reflection of your property’s energy performance, and monitoring it over time can inform the way in which your property team actively manages the performance of your building with regard to its consumption. By increasing your score, your can reduce operational expenses and use this metric to entice potential tenants or buyers, particularly those who prioritize sustainability and containing expenditures on their utilities. In contrast, lower scores indicate an opportunity to address inefficiencies that can product cost savings and operational improvements.

Decoding Energy Star's Energy Use Intensity (EUI) Metric

The primary KPI behind the Energy Star score is Energy Use Intensity, or EUI, which we consider an “energy density” metric. EUI is calculated by taking total energy consumption and dividing it by the square footage of your building.

Lower building EUIs indicate better energy performance, which Energy Star factors into their score generation.

Understanding EUI as a key driver of your Energy Star score is foundational to taking an informed approach to prioritizing goals for energy improvement.

Climate Considerations in Energy Star Assessments

Building owners are rightfully concerned that by owning property in regions with more extreme temperatures, the higher energy consumption required for heating and cooling may have a detrimental effect on their Energy Star score. Fortunately, Energy Star realizes the need to normalize metrics when generating scores for buildings to remove regionally-based disadvantages on account of weather.

Requirements for Energy Star Certification

Energy Star certification is attainable for buildings who achieve a score of 75 or higher, meaning your building performs in the 75% percentile of comparable buildings across the United States. However, as Energy Star score generation relies upon self-reported data, completing the certification process requires that a licensed professional engineer or registered architect verify that the submitted building data is complete and accurate. These professionals will also ensure compliance with indoor air quality standards and other KPIs required for certification..

The Importance of Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency has both environmental and business impacts of substantial magnitude. Building owners and operators can appreciate the lower costs to operate buildings that consume less energy.

With the increasing regulations being implemented at the state and local levels that subject buildings to fines for not meeting energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions standards, it is also essential for building owners and operators to prioritize compliance with these regulatory measures to avoid financial penalties.

All of these factors influence building valuation and how attractive it is to tenants and investors.

Additional Insights on Energy Star Scores for Commercial Buildings

Energy Star scores should not be treated as static point-in-time assessments. Buildings can leverage technology that facilitates routine data collection and ingestion of other information, such as operational changes, capital projects to upgrade your building, changes in property usage, and additional factors, all of which can influence your Energy Star score. A proactive approach to energy management can set buildings on the path to continually optimize and sustain high performance..

Conclusion

The Energy Star score serves as a metric that summarizes building energy efficiency and provides a benchmark by which you can improve energy performance over time. Building owners and operators can adopt the Energy Star score as an actionable KPI to inform energy-conserving efforts that reduce operational costs, improve marketability, avoid financial penalties due to regulatory non-compliance, and ultimately yield a healthier building.

Get in touch with us today if you'd like to learn more about how Backpack can improve Energy Star management for your building while reducing costs.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHT

Automated, audit-ready Energy Star and compliance reporting

• Visibility of compliance requirements mapped to your portfolio
• All required compliance data stored, managed, and submitted
• Automated Energy Star portfolio account management and compliance submissions