ABSTRACT
Beginning in 2017, the City of Denver took the first major step in decreasing the energy use of its largest buildings. This came in the form of an energy benchmarking ordinance requiring all owners of buildings 25,000+ SF to annually assess and report their energy performance. The ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool allows each building to receive a 1-100 percentile score compared to a weather-normalized national database of the same product type.
To aid our clients in this transitionary moment, Powers Brown Architecture developed, for the first time, an array of existing building services. This program enabled us to engage with clients in new ways about, at first, how to comply with the ordinance. We were then able to engage with these owners about how and why they may be experiencing energy performance issues, where the low hanging fruit lies for improvement, and what larger capital expenditures and paybacks look like.
