When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched Energy Star Portfolio Manager in 2000, facility managers who were doing detailed energy tracking and analytics may have been considered on the leading edge. Today, however, measuring and benchmarking energy use is standard practice, and Portfolio Manager is the most widely used tool for doing so. Thirteen years and nearly 300,000 buildings since its launch, Portfolio Manager continues to expand.
In July 2013, after several years of work, EPA launched a major retooling and upgrade of the Portfolio Manager tool. The goal of the upgrade is to scale up and meet the demands of an increasingly benchmarking-savvy industry, says Alexandra Sullivan, technical development manager for Energy Star Commercial Buildings.
A July article in Building Operating Management takes a look at the trends that influenced the upgrade to the tool and some of the benefits facility managers can expect from the news features of the tool.
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