U.S. and Canada Recommit to ENERGY STAR Collaboration
In July, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency announced a new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Natural Resources Canada. The agreement reconfirms the continued commitment of the two agencies to collaborate on new enhancements to the EPA ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool.
Available for commercial, institutional, and multifamily buildings, the free tool tracks and measures online energy, water, waste, and emissions. More than 26,000 Canadian buildings — one-third of Canada’s commercial space — have used the tool to monitor energy use. This ongoing effort between the EPA and NRCan has been going strong since 2011.
EPA ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager Tool
The industry standard for monitoring energy performance within commercial buildings, the EPA ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool is used by more than 275,000 buildings — one-quarter of all U.S. commercial building floorspace. The tool offers dozens of energy performance metrics, even allowing some buildings to receive a 1-100 ENERGY STAR score, comparing performance to similar buildings.
Commercial buildings comprise nearly half of all energy consumption in the U.S., according to the EPA. Energy costs for these structures totals more than $300 billion per year — more than any other economic sector. A way to lower these high costs, an EPA study of more than 35,000 buildings revealed regularly benchmarking energy use can reduce consumption by 2.4% annually.
Additionally, the tool allows building management to measure and track water use, waste and materials, and greenhouse gas emissions. Metrics are conveniently located in one secure online environment, making it easy to stay organized.
About ENERGY STAR
A government-backed symbol of energy efficiency, ENERGY STAR provides easy, trustworthy, unbiased information to both businesses and consumers. Nearly 40% of Fortune 500 companies have joined forces with the EPA to offer energy-saving solutions that benefit the climate and improve air quality and public health.
In total, ENERGY STAR and its partners have helped Americans — including both families and companies — save 5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity, reduce energy costs by more than $450 billion, and lower greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion metric tons.
Narrowing it down even further, in 2019, ENERGY STAR and its partners helped Americans save nearly 500 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and avoid $39 billion in energy costs. On average, nearly 800,000 ENERGY STAR-certified products were sold every day in 2019 — with a grand total of more than 7 billion products sold since 1992.
The ENERGY STAR program has clearly made a huge impact in the U.S., so it’s exciting to see it so well-received in Canada as well.
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