Efficiency and Beyond: Guidance for Energy Efficiency Program Administrators to Aid Building Owners
Each year, U.S. buildings use more energy than most countries, and Americans spend more than $400 billion to heat, cool, and power the places where they live and work. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings not only helps owners, occupants, cities, and utilities save money, it also increases property value, creates jobs, reduces harmful pollution, and creates healthier spaces.
One of the first steps in addressing building energy use is understanding how—and how much of it—is being used. With this in mind, across the U.S., an increasing number of cities, counties, and states are examining building performance benchmarking and transparency as a critical step in addressing building energy and water use. The performance data generated by these programs and legislation help individual building owners become more aware of their building’s performance and how it compares to that of its peers, while also helping policymakers, program administrators, and researchers design and implement effective energy efficiency initiatives.
Compliance, however, is the first step in what can be a continual journey of improvement. This resource list is designed to aid efficiency program account managers in guiding building owners to find ways to pursue greater energy efficiency in their properties beyond complying with a building energy use benchmarking policy. In some cases, these actions can help account managers acquire program participants at a faster rate, decreasing customer acquisition costs.
This tool is part of IMT’s Putting Data to Work toolkit. This comprehensive toolkit is the result of a three-year pilot project that aimed to use building performance data and asset information to help city government sustainability leaders, utilities, and efficiency program administrators and implementers make more informed business decisions and increase building efficiency. The project examined energy efficiency program design and delivery in the District of Columbia and New York City to produce a toolkit of best practices, actionable tools, and case studies to enable other local governments, utilities, and efficiency program implementers to replicate successes. The full toolkit, as well as details on upcoming blogs and webinars associate with the project, is available at imt.org/PuttingDatatoWork.
