November 2015 — Property Management Quarterly —
Page 13
W
hen it comes to your build-
ing and how it uses energy,
do you know your Energy
Star score? It is important
to know how to respond if
a perspective tenant requested this
information.
Increasingly Denver’s building
owners and tenants are recognizing
the value of energy efficiency and
what it means to their bottom line.
Last month, a report released by the
nonpartisan group Environmental
Entrepreneurs and the Colorado-
based Energy Efficiency Business
Coalition found that improving the
energy efficiency of offices, homes,
schools and other buildings around
the state could cut energy costs by
$4.8 billion and create 7,000 jobs
over the next decade. These are huge
– and currently untapped –benefits.
In order to recognize these ben-
efits, building owners, managers and
tenants must learn how their build-
ings use energy. Similar to evaluat-
ing the miles per gallon when shop-
ping for a vehicle, proactive tenants
looking to rent space increasingly
are asking about a buildings’ energy
performance. You should know the
answer for your building.
The 1 to 100 Energy Star Portfolio
Manager score helps owners and
managers easily understand and
compare a building’s energy per-
formance to its peers. Obtaining
this small piece of information is
a critical first step in unlocking a
multitude of benefits from energy-
efficient buildings.
To date, 109 private building own-
ers have voluntarily benchmarked
their building’s energy performance
through the city
and county of Den-
ver’s City Energy
Project Benchmark-
ing Program, and
have shared their
Energy Star Portfo-
lio Manager score
and energy use
intensity, which
is the amount of
energy used per
square foot.
For tenants inter-
ested in showing
their commitment
to energy effi-
ciency, Denver created the Lease for
Efficiency Challenge. Launched Oct.
15 as part of the Denver City Energy
Project, the challenge requests par-
ticipants to commit to asking for a
building’s Energy Star score as part
of the leasing process.
To date, 44 Denver tenants leasing
nearly 2.5 million sf have signed up
for the challenge and committed to
ask about a building’s score when
leasing space. You can access the
full list of participants in the Bench-
marking Program and the Lease for
An Energy Star score offers own-
ers and tenants an easy way to
evaluate energy efficiency. Using the
portfolio manager to benchmark
a building’s energy use is the first
step to improving that performance,
because you can’t manage what you
don’t measure.
Research shows that better man-
agement of building energy use
could generate $1.3 billion in energy
savings from Denver’s largest com-
mercial and multifamily buildings.
For building owners and tenants,
that’s a direct return to the bottom
line and an economic boost for Den-
ver as a globally competitive city
that attracts businesses and workers
of the future.
Improving a building’s perfor-
mance not only raises a structure’s
Energy Star score, but also it lowers
the cost of business for tenants and
increases building value for own-
ers. An Energy Star-certified build-
ing – which means it is at least 75
percent more efficient than its peers
and 25 percent more efficient than
the national average – is 35 percent
more energy efficient than its peers
and saves Colorado tenants an
estimated 50 cents per sf. Certified
buildings also have been found to
have 3.6 percent higher occupancy
rates and are selling for an average
of $61 per sf more than their peers.
Research from the Environmental
Protection Agency shows that build-
ing owners who engage in bench-
marking are more likely to make
energy-efficiency improvements
and, on average, reduce energy use
by 7 percent over three years.
Measuring energy use and invest-
ing in efficiency is a win for build-
ing owners because it identifies and
informs strategies that owners can
use to establish a continuous cycle
of improvement, which has short-
and long-term economic and envi-
ronmental benefits.
Benchmarking and investments
in energy-efficiency improvements
aren’t just for the private sector. The
city and county is leading the way
by committing to reducing energy
use in city-operated buildings, which
represents more than 6 million sf
of space, by 20 percent from a 2011
baseline by 2020.
Denver buildings are sitting on an
untapped wealth of savings. Tenants
and owners alike are becoming sav-
vier about the need to unlock this
economic potential. To learn more
about this project, enroll your build-
ings, and share the Lease for Effi-
ciency Challenge with your tenants,
visit our website.
s
Sustainability
Katrina Managan
Senior adviser,
Denver City Energy
Project, Dept. of
Environmental
Health, Denver
Courtesy Denver City Energy Project
