Are Your ENERGY STAR Scores About to Drop?

The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it will soon be updating performance metrics in its Portfolio Manager application, and per the EPA, “1–100 ENERGY STAR scores and other performance metrics will, on average, go down.”

Portfolio Manager data updates will be applied during an application shutdown on August 26, 2018 and will be available to users August 27. New scores will reflect data gathered via the most recent Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) and will apply to the following building types…

Bank branches
Courthouses
Financial offices
Hotels
Houses of Worship
K-12 schools
Offices
Retail, including retail stores and wholesale clubs/supercenters
Supermarkets
Warehouses, including refrigerated, non-refrigerated, and distribution centers

While exact score changes won’t be available prior to August 26, the EPA has noted that the CBECS data reflects “an overall improvement in the energy performance of the U.S. building stock in recent years.”

The EPA notes that “the new calculations will be applied across all time periods,” which means that “scores and metrics for all historical benchmarking data will change,” and “EPA will not be able to provide ‘before and after’ score changes for individual buildings or portfolios.” Recommendation? Download your Portfolio Manager metrics in Excel prior to the August 26 upgrade and then compare them to post-upgrade metrics to evaluate any changes that occur.

Applications for ENERGY STAR building certifications that are received through August 26 may be evaluated under the pre- or post-update metrics, and post-update metrics will be applied to all applications received after August 26.

In addition to scoring updates, some property types will see changes in the details that are submitted to ENERGY STAR:

Houses of Worship—New Use details will be added: Gross Floor Area Used for Food Preparation, Percent Cooled, Percent Heated.
K-12 schools—Number of Workers on Main Shift will be a required Use detail.
Supermarkets—Number of Open or Closed Refrigeration/Freezer Units will be required Use details.
Non-refrigerated Warehouses—Percent Used for Cold Storage with be added as a Use detail.
Refrigerated Warehouses—Percent Cooled and Percent Heated will be added as Use details.

EnergyCAP users should note that, while their historical data in Portfolio Manager will be automatically updated to the new rating results, that is not the case in EnergyCAP. Prior scores and other rating details will remain unchanged in EnergyCAP. Future data submissions will reflect ENERGY STAR scores that are based on the new rating results.

Additional information about the upcoming ENERGY STAR metrics update is available on the ENERGY STAR website.