Chicago Releases Building Energy Benchmarking Results

In September 2013 the City of Chicago adopted a building energy use benchmarking ordinance requiring commercial, and municipal buildings larger than 250,000 square feet to track and report energy performance data on a yearly basis (more buildings will be phased in over time). Earlier this week the city released it’s first ever Building Energy Benchmarking Report, detailing results from the 2013 reporting period.

While a relatively small number of buildings (348 in total) were required to report, this subset of buildings accounts for approximately 11% of the total building energy use in Chicago.

The report finds that there are significant potential savings to be had from implementing energy efficiency improvements in Chicago’s buildings, including:

13-23% reduction in weather normalized source EUI
$44-$77 million energy cost savings
460-844k tons of avoided GHG emissions.

The report also calls out specific actions that can be taken by building managers, owners, and occupants to improve building energy efficiency in Chicago. One recommendation is participation in green building certification programs that recognize energy efficiency. That sounds like a great idea given that, as the report notes, reporting LEED office buildings had an average Energy Star score of 79 — 7 points better than the average score of reporting non-LEED office buildings. The report also points out that 1,000+ jobs could be created to support implementation of these improvements.

Want to learn more? Check out details of Chicago’s Building Energy Benchmarking program here, or read the full report.