News

ASHRAE Readying New Energy Rating Label For Buildings

August 09, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is revealing new details about its building energy labeling program, including a prototype label design. A select group of building stakeholders will begin testing the program, called Building Energy Quotient (BEQ), sometime in the fall of 2009, ahead of a public release expected sometime in 2010.

ASHRAE, the mechanical engineering association with 55,000 members, began developing BEQ last year. It would require property owners to document the energy characteristics of their buildings and package that data into a label, energy certificate and technical documents.

The program would give buildings a color-coded letter scale rating from A+ to F, with the former reserved for facilities that are net zero – meaning they produce as much energy on site as they consume – and the latter meant for those that are "unsatisfactory." The labels would provide an easy-to-understand metric for owners and tenants to compare with other, similar buildings.

BEQ will include ratings for all building types except residential. The two main components of the label are an asset rating, which is based on energy models and represents the building’s designed efficiency, and an operational rating based on actual performance. The ratings would ideally appear on the label side-by-side, although the operational rating requires 12 months of utility bills, which would disqualify newer buildings.

BEQ is planned to be available for more building types than those currently under Energy Star and ASHRAE’s program would provide a more detailed label (A+ to F as opposed to Energy Star’s pass/fail). But BEQ is also more aggressive and meant to push the building industry toward net zero. The energy use of a typical U.S. commercial building compared to others of the same property type would score in the "C" to "D" range, according to ASHRAE documents. Buildings that have earned the government’s Energy Star label, which signifies the top quartile of energy-efficient buildings, would earn at least a "B". Complying with California’s Title 24 energy requirements would net at least an "A-".