Helping Cities Achieve Building Energy Policy Goals

Cities and growing urban populations are responsible for a substantial fraction of global energy consumption. Within cities, buildings represent the largest share of urban energy consumption and emissions. In New York City, buildings are responsible for 70%1 of overall emissions; in Boston, that number is 712%. Accordingly, the cities which are aiming to reduce their energy consumption cannot achieve that goal without engaging with the building stock and its owners. Across the United States, jurisdictions are establishing goals and developing plans to increase energy efficiency and produce more renewable energy, ultimately leading to a cleaner energy system. Advancements in public policy, such as Building Energy Performance Standards and leading-edge technologies, such as air source heat pumps, are enabling states and local jurisdictions to make significant strides to achieving these goals. The proposed Building EFFiciency Solution (BEFFS), would play a crucial role by filling a gap in the marketplace to assist with the compliance and tracking of these plans and goals. The Phase I proposal leverages existing DOE (SEED™, AssetScore) and EPA (ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager®) tools into the BEFFS platform to simplify the implementation of building efficiency programs, while allowing cities the flexibility to design the programs’ characteristics to meet their policy and technology requirements. BEFFS also facilitates communications and reporting with program stakeholders. The objective is to provide a cost effective solution for small and large cities, and facilitate the implementation and management of building energy performance and efficiency programs. Phase II of this project will extend the BEFFS platform to create a building compliance registry with traceable compliance units exchangeable between participants and between programs.