Sustainability & Energy Management Simplified
Barriers to Data Access: A well-documented barrier to benchmarking multi-
tenant and multifamily properties is that the building owner or operator (or
their agent) who needs to perform the benchmarking may not have access
to complete consumption data for tenants/residents who are billed directly
by the utility. From a utility's perspective, each tenant/resident is a "customer
of record," and the building owner is therefore considered a third party to
tenant/resident-level consumption data. Without this consumption data,
however, the building owner cannot account for the total energy
consumption required to operate their property.
**Recommendations from the EPA for utilities to improve data access
Building Performance Standards:
Many states and jurisdictions are now going beyond benchmarking, and
rolling out mandates for building owners to meet specified targets either for
energy use intensity or emissions reduction. These bills are called building
performance standards. New BPS legislation is starting to proliferate across
various states, and utility companies need to be prepared for the number of
data aggregation requests to increase exponentially in the wake of these
mandates.
Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Risk Disclosure Laws:
Reporting mandates such as the SEC's proposed climate disclosure rules
could be uniquely challenging for energy and utilities because of the
industry's complexity and massive footprint. Proactive utility companies are
not waiting on the final rules to begin thinking about what needs to happen
and how to get there and are already moving toward investor-grade climate
and emissions reporting. Providing the details of your net zero or carbon
reduction commitments, including the associated risks and financial
impacts, in a manner aligned with Regulation S-K and related Regulation S-X
rules will require focus. Once again, utility companies will also need to be
uniquely aware of their need to supply data to others who must be
compliant.
