Public Housing Environmental & Conservation Clearinghouse

User's Guide to the Energy Benchmarking Tool

The energy benchmarking tool is remarkably easy to use; just fill out the gray spaces on the electronic form and it automatically ranks the building (or project) on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is the worst, 100 is the best and 50 is average. In addition to the building's yearly utility usage information (electricity and fuel) and the corresponding units (kWh, therms, gallons, etc.), the tool-as currently configured-requires only seven inputs, all of which are either very obvious or easily obtainable:

1. Zip code (to automatically input climate data)
2. Gross floor area (square feet)
3. Number of units
4. Number of bedrooms
5. Single-family or multifamily building
6. Percent of the floor area that is heated
7. Building age (year it was originally built)

***Warning: This is a whole-building benchmarking tool so electricity AND heating fuel (if the building is not all electric) must be entered, otherwise the score will be incorrect (the efficiency will be artificially high). Similarly, if residents pay all or part of the energy bills, you must include their usage, too, in the Annual Consumption inputs in order to get an accurate benchmarking score.

Click on the link below for several examples of benchmarking energy consumption using voluntary PHA residential data. Once you have reviewed the sample data you may directly access the Energy Benchmarking Tool to begin evaluating your buildings' energy consumption.