Energy Star Overview
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched ENERGY STAR in 1992 as a “voluntary labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Since that time, the EPA has added many new services and offerings. Because a strategic approach to energy management can produce twice the savings - for the bottom line and the environment - as typical approaches, EPA's ENERGY STAR partnership offers a proven energy management strategy that helps in measuring current energy performance, setting goals, tracking savings, and rewarding improvements.
EPA provides an innovative energy performance rating system, which businesses have already used for more than 21,000 buildings across the country. EPA also recognizes top performing buildings with the ENERGY STAR.
Why Use Energy Star?
Increasingly, Wall Street is making a connection between energy management and overall business performance. The thinking goes, if a company is managing energy costs then it is managing other costs as well (“Energy Management and Shareholder Value”, GreenBiz 2005). The ENERGY STAR label is a well-recognized brand that can be used to communicate cost management efforts to others such as executive management, customers and stockholders.
How Advantage IQ Can Help
As the 2005 EPA Energy Star Partner of the Year, Advantage IQ offers qualifying clients the ability to automate their ENERGY STAR building rating process. In 2004, Advantage IQ handled more than 85 percent of all automated building ratings the EPA processed during the year.
The ENERGY STAR® benchmark provides a rating performance on a scale of 1-100. The benchmarks are indicators of how the facility is performing against peer sites nationwide. An annualized usage value that is normalized to a 30-year weather pattern is also provided. Ratings allow energy managers to rank sites that likely offer the best return on investment or could benefit from operational/behavioral changes. Once changes are instituted, the impacts can be tracked using trend analysis. Once a site reaches a rating of 75, then it becomes eligible for an ENERGY STAR® label.
Utilizing Advantage IQ’s ENERGY STAR program can assist clients in a variety of ways, such as:
- Data acquisition and monthly data entry required to obtain ratings are avoided because clients can leverage the data processed by Advantage IQ
- Monthly updates allow ongoing management and facilitation, generating a Statement of Energy Performance report, required for obtaining an ENERGY STAR label.
- Clients can demonstrate different performance values to a variety of stakeholders
- National Benchmark shows executive management how you are performing against peers
- ENERGY STAR ratings show environmental awareness and commitment to efficient buildings
- Wall Street uses energy management as indicator of performance
- Supports analysis for retrofit dollars (capital budgeting)
Advantage IQ allows the energy manager to stay focused on management while we provide underlying data support. Advantage IQ ENERGY STAR® services include setup, data preparation, mapping, and transfer to ENERGY STAR®, site modification and update support, reporting and data migration to Portfolio Manager. Several site characteristics are required by ENERGY STAR®. We support this effort by providing a template that contains known site data and highlights the required additional data to simplify clients’ data collection efforts. Advantage IQ provides the mapping and data manipulation required to obtain a rating. Data is then sent to EPA where it is processed. Ratings are then returned and stored in our data warehouse and made available via special reports on our Facility IQ™ system. These web-enabled reports allow trend analysis and facility ranking reports across a client's portfolio of properties. Advantage IQ will also have the data transferred to the EPA’s Portfolio Manager, allowing the client to select sites for ENERGY STAR certification by initiating the Statement of Energy Performance (SEP).
To learn more about Energy Star, go to http://www.energystar.gov, and to find out more about getting your buildings benchmarked, contact us.
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