Townhalls are some of the greatest opportunities that the UMA Offers to its members to network and share information and experiences with each other around Utility Management, Sustainability, ESG, and other diverse topics of utility management as they relate to Multifamily. Recently, the UMA hosted a townhall around the emergence of Building Performance Standards, “BPS,” hosted by Joni Sappington of Quarterra and featured Dimitris Kapsis, Vice President of Energy for RealPage, as its guest speaker to share his insights into BPS.
“BPS is related to Compliance benchmarking.” Dimitris shared. “For those of us who have been doing compliance benchmarking for the past ten years, we saw this coming. We knew eventually there would be a comparative.” The goal of the comparative is that if a building does not meet that Energy Use Intensity, “EUI” threshold, EnergyStar Score, or Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions target set by the authority, then there could be penalties to compel the building owner to make changes so that their building uses less energy and thereby reduce GHG.
Several jurisdictions require that buildings comply with the BPS standard in addition to compliance benchmarking reporting. Dimitris shared the RealPage website link www.real page.com/building-performance-standards as a reference tool to provide insight into what markets currently have a BPS requirement in addition to their compliance benchmark reporting.
“What we are seeing is that when BPS is based on EUI, it is a straightforward calculation of total energy consumption divided by gross square footage. “It is not completely like an EnergyStar score, which takes into consideration if you have a pool or the age of the building or construction type.”
BPS requirements have occurred at both the city and the state level. In markets like Denver, Colorado, where this is both a city and state BPS requirement, the building owner should submit to both agencies and follow whatever threshold is the most restrictive. According to Dimitris, the jurisdiction will often have a dedicated website or information online to help owners understand how the BPS works and how to submit. There may also be additional resources to owners, such as a portal so they can see if the buildings need to participate in the BPS. It was also noted in the presentation that BPS can occur at the building level, meaning if you have a property with multiple buildings, be aware that it is possible that each building must comply independently. If looking up the property by street address is not enough. “You could have a building at the Street address that does not meet the reporting thresholds, but that does not mean the other buildings that make up your property will be exempted too. When we put a street address and nothing comes up, we expand our search to see what other buildings on that block need to comply to ensure that each required building is benchmarked and submitted.”
Dimitris indicated that we should not stress out over BPS. “There is lots of easy measures you can do (to make your buildings more efficient).” We will get through it (BPS), just like we got through compliance benchmark reporting.”
###