Multifamily owners and managers increasingly rely on EPA’s portfolio manager tool to benchmark building energy performance and top scoring properties (75 or more) earn the valued ENERGY STAR designation.
EPA recently announced changes will be made to ENERGY STAR’s datasets which are used to evaluate properties. Effective August 26, 2018, multifamily properties may see their ENERGY STAR scores decrease when EPA shifts to an updated metric for source energy. This shift will trace the source of the raw fuel input (coal, gas, hydro, etc.) used to produce the energy used by an apartment property.
EPA is mindful that many property owners use these benchmarking tools to meet requirements for green financing and has warned that property owners and managers should download all their scores and historical benchmarking data as the new calculations will be applied to historical data and the contemporaneously created ratings will be lost. EPA has also suggested that properties who wish to have the strongest score possible or those that have a score close to 75 complete the certification process prior to the end of July.
More information can be found here.