Dive Brief:
- Measurabl today launched California Building Performance Pulse, a dashboard designed to improve visibility into the sustainability performance of buildings across the state to help operators see how their buildings compare. The nonprofit building performance organization USGBC California partnered with the company on the release.
- The dashboard tracks more than 1.3 billion square feet of floor space across six years of utility reporting on California buildings and combines energy, carbon and water use insights, making it the only public-facing dashboard to include all three, Measurabl said in a statement.
- Although the organizations didn’t tie the dashboard to compliance with the state’s Building Emissions Saving Ordinance, or BESO, which has a reporting requirement that takes effect July 1, giving facilities managers a way to track how other buildings perform could prove helpful. “California’s climate and building performance goals depend on making high-quality data that is accessible, understandable, and actionable,” Ben Stapleton, CEO of USGBC California, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
When its reporting requirement takes effect, California’s BESO will require buildings to conduct performance assessments.
Buildings up to 14,999 square feet will have to conduct an assessment at the time of listing. Those up to 24,999 will have to meet that and also conduct annual benchmarking. Those with 25,000 gross square feet or more will need to meet those requirements and also complete performance assessments every five years.
Failure to conduct BESO assessments at the time of sale, or six months from the sale date if the seller deferred the assessment to the buyer, can result in an $85 administrative late fee to BESO filing fees, and additional penalties including administrative citations.
Separate from BESO, many California localities have their own building performance ordinances requiring assessments and have penalties for noncompliance.
These ordinances reflect “a broader shift toward more transparent, participation-driven, and useful performance insights based on high quality data,” Mike Zatz, senior vice president of global data ecosystem and partnerships at Measurabl, said in a statement.
The dashboard enables facility managers to compare their properties with other properties by building type, including office, industrial, hospitality and retail. It includes a search function that’s filtered by city, floor area, year built and other characteristics. It displays median annual performance, percentile distributions, year-over-year trends and geographic patterns.
The data tracked by the dashboard totals 23 million metric tons of carbon emissions, 109 kilowatt-hours of energy use and 240 billion gallons of water consumption, according to the release.
“As additional buildings join the platform, the dataset becomes more comprehensive and therefore more valuable for the full commercial building ecosystem,” Zatz said.
Measurabl says it has other tools facilities managers can use if they want additional benchmarking visibility, including into performance requirements of green building certifications like LEED, BREEAM and Green Globes.
