CAPITOL RECAP
NANCY BURKE, VP OF GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS
Benchmarking in Buildings Now Required for Denver
B
y September 1st, 2017 buildings over
50,000 square feet in the City and
County of Denver must begin
benchmarking and reporting their
energy performance to the City. Buildings over
25,000 square feet must begin reporting by June
1st, 2018.
The energy used in buildings results in 57
percent of Denver’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Improving building energy efficiency is a key
component of the City's efforts to do our part
on climate change.
Benchmarking the energy performance of
a buildings is the first step to understanding and
reducing energy consumption because you can’t
manage what you don’t measure. The City will
publish building energy performance data each
year to enable the market to better value energy
efficiency, similar to MPG ratings for cars or
nutrition labels on food. Other cities with bench-
marking and transparency requirements have
seen 2-3 percent energy savings each year by
covered buildings.
Complying with the new ordinance has
two basic steps:
Attend an In-Person
Help Session (Jam)
to learn more:
1. Benchmark your building with the free to
Energy Star Portfolio Manager. You’ll need
basic property use information such as size
of the building, number of units, and num-
ber of bedrooms. You’ll need to enter your
Denver Building ID into your Portfolio
Manager account (you can find the ID at
denvergov.org/energizedenver). Have Xcel
Energy upload aggregated whole building
monthly electricity and natural gas data to
your Portfolio Manager account (follow
the steps at xcelenergy.com/energybench-
marking) ALL SESSIONS WILL BE LOCATED AT:
2. Send your report to the City. (Details on
submitting your report can be found at
denvergov.org/energizedenver.) Sessions are free.
www.aamdhq.org
Wed, August 16 (JAM)
8:30 AM - 2:30 PM
Denver Department of
Environmental Health
200 W 14th Avenue
Grand Mesa Room, Second Floor
Denver, CO 80204
Benchmarking
Help Center
Call 1-844-536-4528 to get
answers to any questions you
have about the new
benchmarking requirement. The
help center is open from 8am-
5pm. You can also reach help
center staff by emailing any
questions to EnergizeDenver@
denvergov.org.
Visit www.denvergov.org to register
AUGUST 2017 • TRENDS | 29