Green Globes for New Construction
The Green Globes for New Construction program has expanded its focus on energy efficiency and integrated performance-based criteria rather than prescriptive.
Green Globes NC is now based on the ANSI/GBI 01-2010: Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings standard. Improvements include:
- A new option for energy assessment that uses carbon dioxide equivalency (CO2e) as the basis for its calculations. This also accounts for energy performance from source production and generation to building consumption.
- Shifted focus on multiple attributes for product selection, including lifecycle assessment, multi-attribute certifications, and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
Building Performance Database
Available through the Department of Energy (DOE), the Buildings Performance Database is a free, publicly available record of commercial building energy performance. It allows users to access energy data and perform statistical analysis on more than 60,000 buildings across the country.
The database includes building location, age, size, function, electricity and fuel consumption, equipment information, and operational characteristics. The data can also be used to compare performance trends among similar buildings, identify and prioritize cost-saving improvements, and assess the range of modeled savings.
ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager
The EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager features an enhanced layout and benchmarking capacity. Buildings can quickly enter data, generate reports, and share information with minimal training and effort.
Steamlined features include:
- Easier data entry for utility bills and operational data
- Faster system processing within the database
- Enhanced tracking and customizable reports for current and future projects
- Better sharing capabilities among program users and report generation for external uses
EnergyIQ
The full version of EnergyIQ, a free web-based benchmarking tool, recently made its debut.
Developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the program provides benchmarks for building energy use, cost, greenhouse gas emissions, and characteristics. It allows users to compare their buildings to thousands of others from the California Commercial End-Use Survey and the DOE’s Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey.
EnergyIQ allows both cross-sectional benchmarking, which examines one point in time, and longitudinal benchmarking, which trends building performance over longer periods. Your facility’s data is then used to generate a list of energy upgrade opportunities.
