New York City completes energy efficiency benchmarking for all City-owned buildings

You can't manage what you don't measure.

So opined NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in announcing the City has benchmarked the energy efficiency of every city-owned building over 10,000 square feet (2,790 total facilities). “Understanding the consumption across the city’s portfolio is a critical component of meeting our goal of reducing city government carbon emissions 30% by 2017," the mayor explained.

The project was undertaken using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager benchmarking tool, a process analogous to Octus Energy's methodology in developing energy efficiency projects. As summarized in the GlobeSt.com post:

Benchmarking measures the total electricity, natural gas, steam and fuel oil consumed in a property and adjusts for other factors—including building type, year of construction, number of workers and gross square footage–to help determine which facilities operate inefficiently. The idea is to allow the city to prioritize buildings for energy efficiency investments and monitor performance over time, according to a release.

On an annual cash flow basis, the city expects to break even on its energy efficiency investments in 2013, and projects that by fiscal year 2015 it will have saved more on its energy bills than it has spent on all the planned investments to that point.