Kansas City Requires Energy Benchmarking

The City Council of Kansas City, Missouri, passed an Energy Empowerment Ordinance addressing energy use in existing municipal, commercial, and residential buildings. Under the ordinance, building owners will be required to track whole-building energy and water use and report it to the city annually.

Participating buildings will be phased in, starting with municipal buildings over 10,000 square feet in 2016 and expanding to include private commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 100,000 square feet in 2017. All private commercial and multifamily buildings over 50,000 square feet will be included in 2018.

Under the legislation, owners of the designated buildings will be required to annually benchmark and report to the city their properties’ energy use via the US Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool. The reported benchmarking data will be made available to the public on a phased schedule starting in 2016.

Some building owners had voiced their opposition to the ordinance via the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Metropolitan Kansas City, claiming the mandate would add more expense for building owners and penalize owners of older, less-efficient buildings. But the proponents of benchmarking prevailed.

- Linda Hardesty , Energy Manager Today