The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced the signing of a new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). The agreement recommits the two agencies to continued collaboration on new enhancements to EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool — a free, online energy, water, waste, and emissions measurement and tracking platform for commercial, institutional and multifamily buildings. To date, more than 26,000 Canadian buildings have used the tool to measure and track their energy use — equivalent to one-third of commercial space in Canada.
EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool is the industry standard for measuring and tracking energy performance within commercial buildings, in use by more than 275,000 buildings, which comprise one-quarter of all U.S. commercial building floorspace. The tool provides dozens of energy performance metrics and some buildings can also receive a 1 to 100 ENERGY STAR score, which rates energy performance relative to similar buildings.