Sustainability & Risk / Green Building / Carbon Footprint - Track

Exporting Energy Star Data

Energy Star is an energy performance rating system managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For many types of existing buildings, the EPA rates energy performance on a scale of 1 to 100 relative to similar buildings nationwide using EPA’s Portfolio Manager . Buildings rating 75 or greater may qualify for the ENERGY STAR label.

If you are applying for an Energy Star rating, you can use the Export Energy Star Data task to export data from Web Central to Excel to incorporate into the Energy Star Excel spreadsheet templates. A majority, but not all, of the data in the EPA's template is available in Web Central. The rest of the information you would need to add manually into either the generated spreadsheet or directly into Portfolio Manager after uploading the spreadsheet.

Energy Star rates buildings according to their primary use (also referred to as space type or building type). Accordingly, there is a separate Excel template for each space type in your data set supported by Energy Star. The Building Use enumerated list field in the Archibus Buildings table (bl.use1) maps to the Energy Star space type.

Energy Star requires energy consumption data for each building. The energy consumption is categorized by a specific list of fuels that map to the Fuel Name field in Archibus.

Your Archibus Data and the EPA Templates

The export creates one spreadsheet for each set of records having the same Building Use ID. Each spreadsheet has four worksheets. The specific fields in the spreadsheet vary by type of building use (that is, the value for the Building Use ID).

The spreadsheets use the EPA templates and have columns for all the required fields. If the data for a column does not map to your Archibus data, in some cases a default value is used, that you can modify as needed. In other cases, the values for the column are left blank for your entry.

Following are the worksheets used for some building use values. The worksheets vary by building use.

  • Facilities: This worksheet contains the basic identifying information for the building
  • Office Space: This worksheet has information specific to any office use in the building, such as the number of weekly operating hours, and number of personal computers.
  • Energy Use: This worksheet includes a row for each stationary fuel combustion record (Direct Emissions - Scope 1), and Purchased Electricity, Steam, and Heat record (Indirect Emissions Scope 2) found in the data you selected for the export for this building use.
  • Water Use: This worksheet contains one record for each Water (Liquid) record (Indirect Emissions - Scope 3) found in the data you selected for the export for this building use.

Procedure: Exporting Building Data from Web Central to Excel

Note that using the EPA's Excel templates is only for an initial data load into Portfolio Manager; it cannot be used for ongoing updates to existing building data, and a minimum of 10 buildings must be submitted each time.

To export building data from Web Central to Excel using the EPA Energy Star templates:

  1. Select Carbon Footprint - Track / Export Energy Star Data .

    The Export Energy Star Data form appears.

  2. Use the Filter console to restrict the export to the calculation years, footprint scenarios, sites, or buildings for which you want to submit building data to Energy Star.
  3. Click Show.
  4. In the Building Setup panel, select the scenarios, calculation years, buildings, or sites for which you want to export data.
  5. Click Export to Excel.

    The Paginated Report View appears showing the progress of the job.

  6. When the job has completed running, in the Partial Results section, select a spreadsheet file. There is a spreadsheet for each type of building use in your exported data.
  7. Use the File Download dialog to save the file to your computer.
  8. Enter and save any missing data into the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has columns for all the required fields. In some cases, the worksheet includes default values for the fields that do not map to data stored in Web Central; in other cases, you must enter the value for the column.