Portfolio Manager Overview

Portfolio Manager is an interactive energy management tool that allows you to track and assess energy and water consumption across your entire portfolio of buildings in a secure online environment. Whether you own, manage, or hold properties for investment, Portfolio Manager can help you set investment priorities, identify under-performing buildings, verify efficiency improvements, and receive EPA recognition for superior energy performance.

How can Portfolio Manager help me?

• Manage Energy and Water Consumption for all Buildings
• Rate Building Energy Performance
• Set Investment Priorities
• Verify and Track Progress of Improvement Projects
• Gain EPA Recognition
• Related Tools

Manage Energy and Water Consumption for All Buildings
Portfolio Manager helps you track and assess energy and water consumption within individual buildings as well as across your entire building portfolio. Enter energy consumption and cost data into your Portfolio Manager account to benchmark building energy performance, assess energy management goals over time, and identify strategic opportunities for savings and recognition opportunities.

Any building can efficiently track and manage resources through the use of Portfolio Manager. The tool allows you to streamline your portfolio’s energy and water data, and track key consumption, performance, and cost information portfolio-wide. For example, you can:

• Track multiple energy and water meters for each facility
• Customize meter names and key information
• Benchmark your facilities relative to their past performance
• View percent improvement in weather-normalized source energy
• Monitor energy and water costs
• Share your building data with others inside or outside of your organization
• Enter operating characteristics, tailored to each space use category within your building.

Rate Your Building’s Energy Performance
For many facilities, you can rate their energy performance on a scale of 1–100 relative to similar buildings nationwide. Your building is not compared to the other buildings entered into Portfolio Manager to determine your ENERGY STAR rating. Instead, statistically representative models are used to compare your building against similar buildings from a national survey conducted by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. This national survey, known as the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), is conducted every four years, and gathers data on building characteristics and energy use from thousands of buildings across the United States. Your building’s peer group of comparison is those buildings in the CBECS survey that have similar building and operating characteristics. A rating of 50 indicates that the building, from an energy consumption standpoint, performs better than 50% of all similar buildings nationwide, while a rating of 75 indicates that the building performs better than 75% of all similar buildings nationwide.

EPA’s energy performance rating system, based on source energy, accounts for the impact of weather variations as well as changes in key physical and operating characteristics of each building. Buildings rating 75 or greater may qualify for the ENERGY STAR label.

Commercial buildings eligible to receive a rating, representing over 50 percent of US commercial floor space, are:

• Bank/Financial Institutions
• Courthouses
• Hospitals (acute care and children’s)
• Hotels and Motels
• K-12 Schools
• Medical Offices
• Offices
• Residence Halls/Dormitories
• Retail Stores
• Supermarkets
• Warehouses (refrigerated and non-refrigerated)
• Wastewater Treatment Plants

EPA is always working to develop rating criteria for additional segments of the commercial building market. For those buildings that are not eligible to receive a rating, EPA has created a list of reference energy performance targets PDF (45KB). These are based on average energy use calculated across different types of buildings. These energy performance targets are not normalized for climate nor adjusted for activities which may affect energy use. All targets are expressed in energy use intensity and are derived from the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey.

Set Investment Priorities
Portfolio Manager provides a platform to track energy and water use trends as compared with the costs of these resources. This is a valuable tool for understanding the relative costs associated with a given level of performance, helping you evaluate investment opportunities for a given building and identify the best opportunities across your portfolio.

The built-in financial tool within Portfolio manager allows you to compare cost savings across buildings in your portfolio while also allowing you to calculate cost savings for a specific project. Being able to quickly and clearly obtain figures showing cumulative investments in facility upgrades or annual energy costs eases decision making for best practice management of your buildings nationwide.

Verify and Track Progress of Improvement Projects
You can use Portfolio Manager to generate a Statement of Energy Performance (SEP) for each building, summarizing important energy information and building characteristics such as site and source energy intensity, CO2 emissions, gross floor area, and number of personal computers. The Statement of Energy Performance can help you to:

• Apply for the ENERGY STAR label
• Satisfy LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) requirements
• Support mortgage, sale, and/or lease transactions
• Document performance in energy service contracts
• Communicate energy performance with tenants/owner/customers

Gain EPA Recognition
You can use Portfolio Manager to share your data with EPA and earn recognition for energy performance within a building or across your entire portfolio. Share best practices, become a Leader for energy improvement, or top energy performance, or simply gain exposure through development of success stories or showcasing a directory of achievements for clients. Recognition opportunities include: PDF (14KB)

• ENERGY STAR label — Recognition for superior energy performance in a single building
• ENERGY STAR Leaders — Recognition for organization-wide improvement or top energy performance
• ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year — Recognition for outstanding contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency

Related Tools

• Target Finder
  Target Finder helps users establish an energy performance target for design projects and major building renovations. By entering a project’s estimated energy consumption, users can generate an energy performance rating based on the same rating system applied to existing buildings. Outstanding projects may be designated as "Designed to earn the ENERGY STAR".
• Industrial Plant Energy Performance Indicators
  EPA is currently working with a variety of industries to develop additional benchmarks of plant energy performance. These indicators are currently available for auto assembly, cement, and corn refining plants.