California commercial building energy benchmarking

Building energy benchmarking is the comparison of whole-building energy use relative to a set of similar buildings. It provides a useful starting point for individual energy audits and for targeting buildings for energy-saving measures in multiple-site audits. Benchmarking is of interest and practical use to a number of groups. Energy service companies and performance contractors communicate energy savings potential with "typical" and "best-practice" benchmarks while control companies and utilities can provide direct tracking of energy use and combine data from multiple buildings. Benchmarking is also useful in the design stage of a new building or retrofit to determine if a design is relatively efficient. Energy managers and building owners have an ongoing interest in comparing energy performance to others. Large corporations, schools, and government agencies with numerous facilities also use benchmarking methods to compare their buildings to each other.