Using Pear.ai for ENERGY STAR® Reporting

Article by Constellation

Initiatives to improve energy efficiency in buildings across the US. are becoming more prevalent as cities, states and businesses look for ways to achieve their sustainability goals for a carbon-free future. Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of the energy consumed in the United States and over 30 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.¹

In 2010, New York City was the first U.S. city to require annual energy and water consumption reporting. Many other cities have followed including Washington D.C., Chicago and Philadelphia, requiring businesses to track their energy consumption and some also require yearly reports. Businesses can choose to participate in ENERGY STAR^® voluntarily if mandates aren’t in place yet for their city or state.

Energy benchmarking is reported using ENERGY STAR^® to measure a building’s energy use and compare it to the energy use of similar buildings, its own past energy use, or previous levels of performance.

What is ENERGY STAR?

ENERGY STAR^® is a joint program developed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to promote the environmental and economic benefits of saving energy using energy efficient products and practices. ENERGY STAR^®’s Portfolio Manager tool captures the cost and energy consumption information from a building’s utility bills and then measures the performance of that building against the national average for similar building types.

Depending on the main function of a building, ENERGY STAR^® uses an algorithm to rate the building from 0 to 100. Once your building has been benchmarked, you’ll need a rating of 75 or higher to receive an ENERGY STAR^® certification.

Benchmarking data is publicly disclosed via an online database and shows a building owners’ efforts to reduce emissions and improve the local air. Environmentally conscious investors, tenants and other stakeholders may look to this data prior to investing or signing a lease to see a building manager’s commitment to environmental stewardship.

An ENERGY STAR^® rated building is also preferred over a building that hasn’t been upgraded with energy efficiency improvements, because they’ll save substantial amounts of money each month on their energy bills. Pulling utility bills together each month from several buildings and organizing the data on spreadsheets into Portfolio Manager is a time-consuming process. Pear.ai can help organize all that data and compile monthly reports for ENERGY STAR^®.

Pear.ai Platform and ENERGY STAR reporting

Cities and businesses around the U.S. that want to improve the sustainability status of their buildings and/or meet city or state mandates can take advantage of Constellation’s Pear.ai platform. The Pear.ai platform can digitize and automate your utility invoices, simplifying the process for ENERGY STAR^® reporting. It pulls monthly utility invoices and centralizes them thereby eliminating the manual data gathering and reporting. The platform can provide site, property, and meter editing as well as monthly energy updates, providing facility managers information on their buildings and where they can be more energy efficient.

Constellation and the Pear.ai platform can give meaning to all of your energy data and seamlessly help with your ENERGY STAR^® reporting needs. To start proactively taking control of your energy data with the Pear.ai platform, contact us today.

¹U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Annual Energy Outlook 2020 with Projections to 2050 (Washington, DC: EIA, January 2020), www.eia.gov/aeo; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2018 (Washington, DC: U.S. EPA, 2020), EPA 430-R-20-002), https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhousegas-emissions-and-sinks-1990-2018.