The majority of the information below is directly from the DC Benchmarking Informational Flyer made available by DOEE.
WHAT IS BENCHMARKING?
The Clean and Affordable Energy Act of 2008 established that all private buildings over 50,000 gross square feet within the District of Columbia, including multifamily residences, must measure and disclose their energy and water consumption to the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The annual reporting deadline is April 1st of each year, for the previous calendar year. Benchmarking is defined as tracking a building’s energy and water use and using a standard metric to compare the building’s performance against past performance and to its peers nationwide. In the District, benchmarking and reporting is done using U.S. EPA’s free ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® tool. Summary data for each reported building is published on DOEE’s website.
IS MY BUILDING REQUIRED TO BENCHMARK?
All commercial and multifamily buildings over 50,000 gross square feet are required to report benchmarking data to the District on a yearly basis. Check your building plans or blueprints and the DOEE’s Covered Building List to determine the square footage of your building.
WHAT HAPPENS IF I DO NOT REPORT?
If you are the owner of a private commercial or multifamily building over 50,000 square feet, you are required to measure and report energy and water benchmarking data to the District by April 1st of each year. Failure to do so can result in fines of up to $100 per day of non-compliance. Your building will typically receive a Notice of Violation before receiving any fines, but it is always a good idea to check the final public disclosure for the specific reporting year to ensure that your original submission went through accurately.
Our era building solutions team has been placing courtesy calls/emails to many of the owners/managers listed as "no report received" on the latest public disclosure to help them get ahead of any notices. If you received a message from us but are confident that your report was submitted properly and completely, please feel free to contact us or email DC's Energy Benchmarking Help Center for assistance.
WHAT INFORMATION DO I NEED?
You will need to gather specific space type information for your building, such as the gross floor area, operating hours, and number of occupants. Additionally, you will need to gather 12 full calendar months of data for the requested reporting year for all energy sources and water, from January 1 through December 31. Note that whole building data is required under this regulation, and this data is available from all utilities in the District.
WHAT ARE MY NEXT STEPS?
First, identify if you plan to self-perform the benchmarking reporting or outsource to a third-party consultant. Many organizations choose to handle compliance in-house using existing internal resources for data entry, but many also choose to lean on one of the Region’s skilled consultancies (like era) to perform some or all of the tasks at hand and add a layer of energy analysis which may make the process more actionable. This determination will largely depend on your organization’s goals, objectives, and capabilities/resources.
One of several methods which we use to ensure annual compliance and make benchmarking data actionable for our clients is our era utility dashboard [below]. Contact us to learn more.
If you have decided to self-perform, scroll down for everything you need to know from getting started to submitting your reporting.
IF YOU HAVE DECIDED TO SELF-PERFORM,
Here are your next steps…
Get Started
1. Determine if your property is subject to the benchmarking law based on the current Covered Building List.
2. Create a Portfolio Manager account on EPA’s benchmarking site, or log in to your existing account.
3. Review the latest District Data Collection Worksheet
Collect and Enter Data
4. Identify the data you will need to complete benchmarking for District requirements. This will include:
- DC Real Property Unique ID (SSL/Parcel/Complex Number) as noted in the Covered Building List (see step 1 above)
- Gross floor area of the building of each major space use type within the building
- Space use attributes, as noted in the District Data Collection worksheet (see step 3 above)
- Whole-building or individual meter energy and water utility information
5. Collect the above information for your building for the applicable calendar year(s), including information for any non-residential tenants. Aggregated whole-building data for multi-tenant buildings can be requested directly from Pepco/Exelon and Washington Gas at doee.dc.gov/page/energy-benchmarking-data-collection.
6. Enter building and utility data into your Portfolio Manager account. For assistance, see the steps above for supplemental documents or contact the Benchmarking Help Center.
7. Run the Data Quality Checker for time period ending in December of the year you are reporting to identify any potential errors that may require your attention.
Report Results to the District
8. Review the step-by-step reporting guide and access the appropriate District Reporting Template. Download the template to your Portfolio Manager account, select the property or properties that you wish to report at the bottom of the screen, and click “Generate Response Preview.”
9. Review and fix any potential errors that may appear in the Templates and Reports page of Portfolio Manager. When you are comfortable with your submission, select “Send Response,” and complete the requested information to report your data.
Track Progress
10. Compare your score to previous years to track your progress in Portfolio Manager. Maintain all benchmark documents related to your properties for at least three years after the submission date. If you acquire updated or corrected utility, floor area, or space use data, you must update the data in Portfolio Manager and re-report within 30 days.
Take Action
11. Whether our clients “go-it-alone” for benchmarking or recruit our assistance, action is where era earns our keep. We are here to help with any of your energy benchmarking needs, and—even more importantly—any of your business-level goals and objectives. We help our clients to improve the strength of their businesses operationally and financially by identifying and implementing building solutions that will yield real results. We work closely with DCSEU, DC PACE, and a number of other impactful local organizations to bring funding to the table and ensure that our partnerships with our clients always bear the best possible returns on their invaluable capital.