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Since 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program has offered a national energy performance rating for hotels. This 1-to-100 rating system has helped numerous hotel owners and operators enhance their energy-management capabilities, increase energy efficiency throughout their properties and achieve recognition for their successes. In the first quarter of 2009, Energy Star will release an updated version of the rating tool.
Serving a similar role as the automobile "miles-per-gallon" metric, the Energy Star rating is a measurement of whole-building energy performance. The rating helps hoteliers assess how efficiently their buildings use energy relative to similar hotels nationwide. By tracking performance across an entire portfolio of hotels, users can see which properties are performing at a superior level and which may benefit from operational enhancements and other energy efficiency upgrades. Furthermore, the tool allows users to track greenhouse gas emissions related to energy use, and it also can be used to monitor water consumption.
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To date, more than 3,300 hotels (representing over 710 million square feet) have benchmarked their energy performance using this tool. Of these, more than 300 properties have earned the Energy Star, indicating they are performing in the top 25 percent of all hotels nationwide. Commercial buildings that earn the Energy Star use an average of 40 percent less energy than typical buildings and also release 35 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Recent movement within the marketplace—including the commitment of several major hotel companies to the Energy Star partnership, the growing industry interest in green and the development of state and local legislation requiring buildings to benchmark using Energy Star's rating—suggests the lodging industry's use of the tool will increase dramatically in the near future.
Energy Star revises its rating tools on a regular basis, subject to the availability of reliable, industrywide data. Like most other Energy Star ratings, the revised hotel rating is based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, which is conducted every four years.
In the coming months, Energy Star will be working to finalize the tool for public release in early 2009. Current users of Portfolio Manager will have their information automatically transitioned into the new model at that time. Energy Star looks forward to delivering this updated tool and encourages hotel owners and operators to pursue energy-management practices through these partnerships.
For more information, please visit www.energystar.gov|~ .
Anna Stark is the national program manager for commercial property markets, Energy Star, United States Environmental Protection Agency.
