The Trump administration is considering the elimination of the Energy Star program, leaving cities, states, building owners and facility managers wondering what they can do to manage their energy benchmarking data in its absence.
Until alternative tracking methods arise, regulators and building operators would be operating in unchartered territory as they devise ways to collect and report data, experts say.
Energy Star was created in 1992 under President George H. W. Bush. It costs taxpayers approximately $35 million each year to operate while contributing $42 billion in annual energy savings, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.
For facility managers, the program’s commercial and industrial component, which includes tracking software called Portfolio Manager, is of most immediate importance. States and localities use Portfolio Manager to track the energy consumption of more than 330,000 buildings, or nearly 25% of all commercial building space in the U.S., and contributes more than one-third of the Energy Star program’s savings, according to the Institute for Market Transformation.
The Energy Star Portfolio Manager program, or ESPM, is used by more than 100,000 building owners and operators to track their energy use and identify areas for improvement. A handful of states and almost 50 localities rely on ESPM as a foundation for their energy benchmarking and transparency policies, according to the Energy Star website. Two cities, Washington, D.C., and Chula Vista, California, also use Portfolio Manager as the main metric for their building performance standard laws.
“[Portfolio Manager has] helped building owners access low-interest rate loans, comply with regulations (like New York City’s LL97 building performance law), take advantage of rebates and earn recognition that distinguishes their energy efficient building from the one next door,” Measurabl CEO and co-founder Matt Ellis wrote in an opinion piece earlier this month.
“It’s pretty darn important as a centralized, easy-to-understand platform,” Matt Pittinger, manager of energy and water advising at ENGIE Impact, told Facilities Dive. “It’s the rubric for all sorts of various programs throughout the country, and it obviously has tremendous brand recognition. Even Portfolio Manager itself is super helpful for people like me, my company and facilities managers all around. Not to mention the whole compliance side of things.”
More than 1,200 companies and organizations have signed letters advocating for the EPA to continue operating the Energy Star program. They argue a sudden change in program management will damage the real estate sector at a time when there is already significant uncertainty in the economy. These organizations include IFMA, The Real Estate Roundtable, Building Owners and Managers Association International, NAIOP, the National Association of Home Builders, the Association of Energy Engineers, as well as more than 15 U.S. cities.
How Energy Star Portfolio Manager works
Using a 1-100 Energy Star score, Portfolio Manager enables everyone in an organization, from maintenance technicians to the CEO, to understand how a building is performing against similar buildings nationwide, according to the program website. Based on actual, measured data, the Energy Star score assesses how buildings perform as a whole — taking into account its physical attributes, operations and how the people inside use it — compared with buildings nationwide that have the same primary use.
A score of 50 represents median energy performance, while a score of 75 or higher indicates top performers eligible for Energy Star certification. The peer groups are established through a national survey, known as the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey, or CBECS, by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. The survey takes place approximately every 5-7 years.
These Energy Star scores provide a way for facility managers to benchmark energy use, before drawing up capital expenditure plans for upgrading building systems or more cost-intensive improvements, according to Gary Williams, senior director of sustainability and energy solutions at ESFM, a facilities management division of Compass Group USA.
“You want to see where your building stands from an energy efficiency point of view,” Williams told Facilities Dive. “If the benchmarking report comes out with a score much lower than 75, then there’s room for improvement. If the score is 75 or more, then the building qualifies to be Energy Star certified and they can bear the logo on their building.”
Energy Star scores are calculated through “a technical formula … based on square footage and then various building attributes are built in to create a model of energy consumption that is then overlaid with your actual utility bills,” Pittinger of ENGIE Impact said. The calculations are based on source energy and account for the impact of weather variations and changes in property use details, the Energy Star website says.
Given the sensitivity of the data that’s collected, security is important and specialists in the field say Energy Star has established a good track record in that regard.
“Building owners trust that their data will stay confidential [and] they’re not going to get sales calls from people based on their confidential data,” Cliff Majersik, senior advisor at the Institute for Market Transformation, said in an interview. Majersik’s organization is a national nonprofit that partners with governments, businesses and communities to improve building efficiency and performance.
The implications, consequences of eliminating Portfolio Manager
In its fiscal 2026 budget request, the Trump administration has proposed eliminating all funding for the Atmospheric Protection Program, which includes Energy Star. If Congress agrees to that, it would mean the loss of a crucial program and its widely used tool – Energy Star Program Manager – that building owners, operators and cities have come to rely on to improve building performance, and lower energy costs, Pittinger said.
Energy Star Portfolio Manager “likely could be replaced,” Pittinger said, “but there would certainly be a lot of heartache, at least in the short term before various municipalities were able to find something as good to replace it.”
Pittinger said a third-party might “pick up the torch” to replace Portfolio Manager. “Or individual states or cities may create their own type of measurement and benchmarking system.”
This view echoes comments by Ellis in his opinion piece last month. “The potential end of Energy Star forces fundamental questions around what should come next, why and on what terms,” Ellis wrote. “Those are healthy questions to ask at any time, but today, they’re critical for commercial property as an industry to move forward.“
Although the concern is high, until something specific about eliminating the program comes out, stakeholders should stay realistic, Pittinger said.
“We haven’t seen anything specific,” he said. “So I think pumping the breaks a little bit is warranted.”
“Preparing for all possibilities, we’re working with jurisdictions and building owners to back up their own data,” Majersik said. “Energy Star has a web page with straightforward instructions on how to do that.”
