Energy Star Certification – ComEd makes compliance easier

In 1992, the Energy Star program was introduced in an attempt to promote energy efficient products. Though the initially labeled products were computers and monitors, the program now includes a broad range of items, from appliances to commercial buildings. The focus of this program is to promote energy conservation and generate awareness among consumers.

For building owners, Energy Star has the potential to help managers quickly and easily capture their energy consumption history and trends so they can initiate effective measures to conserve energy. Obtaining Energy Star certification has been shown to translate into a 3 percent premium in rental value and a 16 percent increase in sale price for commercial buildings.

Why enrollment in energy star is not fast enough?

Single and multi-tenant building managers face difficulties in obtaining permission from their tenants to collect energy usage data, verifying and consolidating it for the whole building and furnishing it to Energy Star. Further, they have to access the usage data from their utility which is a mulish process but has to be undertaken at monthly intervals to comply with energy star requirements. This led building managers to stay away from Energy Star. But Energy Star certification is no longer optional in commercial properties. Commercial Energy Star rating at the time of building sale, rental, and for government grants is now mandatory.

Regulations

In New York City, local law 0476 mandates city buildings over 10,000 square feet and private buildings over 50,000 square feet to track electricity and water usage from 2011. In Denver, Colorado, Executive Order 123 mandates that new construction and major renovations of existing and future city-owned and operated buildings be designed in line with Energy Star certification requirements. This includes being benchmarked in Portfolio Manager, the program's interactive energy management tool that allows managers to track and assess energy consumption for an entire commercial building.

Calico Energy’s Green Certification

Fortunately, utility companies have realized that they have to contribute their mite. In fact, Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) working with Calico Energy has designed a solution that facilitates submission of building-wide energy usage data to Energy Star.  The solution, Calico Energy's Green Certification, is an upgraded version of Energy Usage Data System (EUDS), originally developed by Calico in co-operation with ComEd in 2008. Green Certification greatly simplifies the process of organizing and sharing energy information by serving as an automated link between the existing back-end utility data systems and Portfolio Manager. ComEd’s set-up time for each building has dropped from 10 to 12 days to just 24 hours as a result. Building operators can quickly benchmark their energy usage, a prerequisite to qualify for Energy Star certification. The solution is deployed as a managed software service and hence commercial customers do not have to purchase, install or maintain any products at their end. Thus technical improvements to Portfolio Manager become transparent to building managers. For commercial buildings in ComEd's service territory, building managers can enroll in the program at no extra cost by contacting their account manager at ComEd.