Utility Tracking and Benchmarking Blog | WegoBlog

At WegoWise, quality comes first. We have heated debates over building characteristics, spend hours scrutinizing utility bills to make sure we're pulling every possible detail, and never create a benchmark with fewer than twenty buildings. 

I love winter. My passion, however, does not extend to the higher utility bills that come along with it, especially since moving into a house that was constructed in 1910 and is essentially a sieve. Despite 2012’s mild winter, our January heating bill reached $318 and last month we paid $187. Yuck.

Last month, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) made the results from the first year of the LEAN Multifamily Benchmarking Inventory available to the public.

Multifamily housing presents an excellent opportunity for energy efficiency measures for three primary reasons. First, much of this housing stock is old: according to the Energy Programs Consortium, 85% of multifamily housing in the United States was constructed before 1990. This means many of the structures need repairs and most have building systems that are outdated. Next, the physical characteristics of multifamily housing, such as exterior exposure per residence, make it easier to perform retrofits. And finally, the larger scale of these types of properties means that improvements result in larger total reductions in usage and larger financial savings. Due to these factors, EPC found that multifamily buildings could save anywhere from 30 – 75% of energy through efficiency measures. We’ve observed this ourselves through the work we’ve been doing in Massachusetts with the LEAN Multifamily Benchmarking Inventory. In some cases, owners have reduced their energy bill by more than 50% through retrofits.

Below are five great infographics that focus on behavior changes and their potential impact on the environment. Enjoy! (Click on the image to view the full infographic.) 

With so many properties in need of energy efficiency upgrades, it's often difficult to decide where to start.  Energy efficiency program administrators have the additional burden of trying to decide which projects deserve funding.

The overall water and energy efficiency of your building is a function of three things:
1. Design and construction

The Occupy Movement’s agenda, whether you call it vague or comprehensive, is certainly very large. Most often the grievances put forth by the protestors align, but occasionally — especially with issues like the environment — do come into conflict and fracture the community. One example of this is the recent debate over the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline.

NYC building owners who had yet to comply with Local Law 84 received letters warning of fines a few weeks ago. Have you complied yet? Read about the ordinance here:

Local Law 84

New York City’s Local Law 84 (LL84), which went into affect this year, mandates that owners of large NYC buildings report their property's annual energy usage to the city's Department of Finance. The law applies to buildings that are:

A few months ago, my colleague Nate wrote a blog article discussing the respective closings of Microsoft Hohm and Google Powermeter. Hohm and Powermeter each worked to provide home energy usage summaries and benchmarks, which allowed users to better understand and assess their energy habits and property efficiency.