Benchmarking to Reduce Your Building’s Energy and Water Costs
If you own, manage or represent a commercial or residential building that’s 100,000 square feet and larger, you may be required to report its energy and water use by July 1, 2019.
Benchmarking to Reduce Your Building’s Energy and Water Costs
Energy and water usage can represent some of the largest operating costs in a large building. With the help of Ontario’s Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking (EWRB) initiative, you can make your building more efficient and save money.
Under the EWRB initiative, most buildings in Ontario that are 100,000 square feet or larger are required to report their energy and water use to the provincial government annually. By reporting your energy and water use, you can begin to track your consumption. This can help you identify opportunities to improve your building’s efficiency, reduce your energy and water consumption and save money. You can also compare your energy and water use to similar buildings, so you can see how your building stacks up.
Reporting your usage can help you:
- Save money by tracking consumption
- Identify energy and water efficiency opportunities
- See how you stack up to similar buildings
Reporting energy and water usage can save money for building owners and the energy system. Studies have shown as much as a 30 per cent decrease in energy usage in commercial and residential buildings that implemented just a small number of energy efficiency strategies and monitoring systems. Buildings that take these steps can lower their energy bills. By increasing conservation and reducing stress on the energy system, we can save costs by avoiding the need to build more generation.
Some of the 25 U.S. jurisdictions that have building energy benchmarking requirements like the EWRB initiative have measured decreases in energy use of up to 10 per cent, including in large cities such as Chicago and New York. After tracking their usage, a majority of buildings in these jurisdictions have taken steps to improve performance by investing in low- or no-cost changes.
Once fully phased in by 2020, the EWRB initiative will require most owners of commercial, industrial, multi-unit residential and other building types that are 50,000 square feet and larger to report their building’s energy and water consumption, and greenhouse gas emission data annually to the province.
To help your building report and improve its efficiency, utility companies (i.e., owners or operators of water works, Local Distribution Companies and natural gas utilities) must make certain information available to building owners.
How can you prepare for EWRB reporting?
If you own, manage or represent a building that will be reporting:
- Visit ontario.ca/energyreporting to find out if your building type is required to report and to find other useful information, including how and when to report.
- Contact EWRB Support by phone at 1-844-274-0689, or by email at EWRBSupport@ontario.ca to update your contact information and get an Ontario EWRB ID – a unique number assigned to each large building owner. You will need your property assessment roll number found on your property tax bill/property assessment.
- Contact your energy and water utilities well in advance of the EWRB reporting deadline of July 1, to get the information you need to report.
- If you know the owner of a large building that has not heard about the EWRB regulation, encourage them to contact EWRB Support. This will help ensure we have current contact information for all large buildings.
- Talk to your industry colleagues about the EWRB reporting requirement, and encourage them to contact us for more information.
- If you have further questions, please call EWRB Support at 1-844-274-0689 or email EWRBSupport@ontario.ca.
Helpful Links
Regulation Guidelines: https://www.ontario.ca/page/guide-energy-and-water-reporting
EWRB Building Types: https://www.ontario.ca/page/guide-energy-and-water-reporting#section-7
Ministry EWRB Description: https://www.ontario.ca/page/measure-energy-and-water-use-large-buildings
Submitted by Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines
