Building Energy Labeling Pilot Program Launched

Aimed at reducing energy use in facilities, the Building Energy Quotient Program (Building EQ) has been launched by ASHRAE along with building owners and designers, real estate developers, and government agencies. The program is designed to provide information on a facility’s energy use and to encourage finding ways to cut energy use and costs. With metrics for measuring both the energy the building is designed to use and the energy actually being consumed, the program aims to close the gaps between intention and operation.

Building EQ will include both “As Designed” (asset) and “In Operation” (as operated) ratings for all building types, except residential. It also will provide a detailed certificate with data on actual energy use, energy demand profiles, indoor air quality, and other information that will enable facility professionals to evaluate and reduce energy use. The program is administered by ASHRAE.

The Building EQ indicates how much energy is used per square foot. On the sample label below, the letter rating indicates how this building compares to a typical building and how close the building is to its technical potential.

“Information on a building energy’s use is the critical first step in making the necessary changes and choices to reduce energy use and costs,” said Gordon Holness, ASHRAE president. “The Building EQ program provides an easily understood scale to convey a building’s energy use in comparison to similar buildings, occupancy types and climate zone, while also providing building owners with building-specific information that can be used to improve building energy performance.”

Holness noted that building energy use disclosure is already mandatory in California; Washington, DC; Austin, TX; Washington State; the European Union; and Australia.

Those participating in the pilot program include:

  • The Durst Organization, the owner, manager and builder of 9 million square feet of mid-town Manhattan office and residential properties, will include 4 Times Square, 1155 Avenue of the Americas and One Bryant Park in New York City in the pilot
  • The U.S. General Services Administration, the primary agency responsible for the acquisition and management of federal buildings owns or leases 8,600 properties and maintains an inventory of more than 354 million square feet of workspace for 1.1 million federal employees
  • BNIM Architects, a leader of a new generation of design firms headquartered in Kansas City, MO, will include The Omega Center for Sustainable Living in Rhinebeck, NY; the Internal Revenue Service, Kansas City Campus, Kansas City, MO (see TFM‘s February 2009 coverage of this facility); and the Fayez S. Sarofin Research Building, home of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, in the pilot
  • Hines, a privately owned real estate firm involved in real estate investment, development and property management worldwide headquartered in London and Houston, TX, will place high profile properties from five major U.S. market in the pilot
  • The Detroit-Wayne Joint Building Authority will include the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, which is home of six branches of city and county government including Circuit and Probate Courts, City and County Clerks and the Executive and Legislative branches of the City of Detroit, in the pilot
  • The Michigan Department of Management and Budget, which acquires and manages properties for many of the state’s agencies.

Through the pilot program, the Building EQ program will allow fine tuning and final development of the program. In parallel with this effort, ASHRAE has developed a certification program for building energy modelers. Following completion of the pilot program in mid-June, the program is expected to be fully functional by the end of 2010.

Under the program, new buildings will be eligible to receive an” As Designed”, or asset, rating, which provides an assessment of the building based on the components specified in the design and is based on the results of building energy modeling and simulation. An “In Operation” rating will be available once the building has at least one year of data on the actual energy use and is based on a combination of the structure of the building and how it is operated. Existing buildings would be eligible to receive both an “As Designed” and “In Operation” rating.

“With procedures for both an ‘As Designed’ and ‘In Operation’ rating, building owners can make side by side comparisons that could further reconcile differences between designed and measured energy use on an ongoing basis,” Holness said.


1 COMMENT

  1. The idea of reducing energy consumption in facilities is a great idea that more industrial companies should try to implement.

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