We have received quite a few questions and inquiries about what our plans are if the federal government moves forward with its plan to shut down the ENERGY STAR program and I wanted to take a few minutes to state our current efforts and future goals regarding ENERGY STAR.
First, I wanted to address our full support for the ENERGY STAR program, which has been one of the most successful joint ventures between the government and private enterprise in the history of the United States. It has saved U.S. consumers and businesses over $500 billion in energy expenses since 1992. With an annual expense of only $32 million, it generates an annual savings of over $40 billion, making it one of the most efficient and cost-effective programs in U.S. history. We are proud to be long-time ENERGY STAR Partners and are listed as one of the program’s Most Active Service & Product Providers.
EnergyPrint was proud to sign a recent letter from the U.S. Green Building Council lobbying for the continuation and full funding of the program. We will continue to advocate for the program as we share the same vision of trying to help consumers and business owners make responsible and forward-thinking energy decisions that can help control their energy costs on an ongoing basis. Read the whole letter and see how many of our energy-saving industry peers signed it.
Recently, we reached out to our customers to reassure them that their data is not at risk if the ENERGY STAR program is discontinued. EnergyPrint will continue to gather utility data on their behalf and store it in perpetuity—this includes ENERGY STAR scores and trends. And as cities and states with existing energy benchmarking ordinances adapt to changes on the federal level, we will help our customers submit data through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager (ESPM) or any other replacement reporting tool to comply with these laws.
Thanks to customer feedback, we learned many of our customers found Energy Use Intensity (EUI) on ESPM to be an incredibly valuable metric. While we have always provided an annual snapshot of EUI for each property on our Utility Dashboard (we simply referred to it as consumption per square foot) we decided to incorporate monthly tracking of this metric for the entire property and for each utility type. We’ve added it to our Portfolio and Property Energy Trend graphs. Now, you can easily visualize your EUI over time for each building, across your entire building portfolio, and compare your buildings’ EUIs to each other.
This is the first of what we hope will be several additional dashboard improvements as we continue to listen to our customers about what they find most useful and relevant in their ESPM profiles. We also will be continuing to have conversations with state and local legislators here in the state of Minnesota to help educate them about what a resource gap shutting down the ENERGY STAR program would create for consumers, business owners, and property owners and managers.
ENERGY STAR is a vital program that we hope will continue, but EnergyPrint will remain steadfast in its advocacy and innovation so that we can continue to help our customers meet their energy goals now and into the future.
Sincerely,
Matt Gamble, Chief Operating Officer at EnergyPrint