In 2013, the President’s Climate Action Plan expanded the Better Building Challenge to cover multifamily buildings. An instrumental component of the program—which supports commercial and industrial building owners in reducing energy use by at least 20 percent by 2020—is benchmarking.
The Better Building Challenge encourages owners of multifamily housing, from market-rate to federally assisted developments, to take part. The program provides free technical assistance to participants to measure, track, and improve portfolio energy performance. Participants develop a metric-driven action plan that aims to produce energy savings of 20 percent over ten years. Participants also complete a “showcase” energy efficiency project and share their portfolio-wide consumption with the Better Buildings Challenge network. As of December 2013, more than50 owners of multifamily buildings had signed on as partners, representing over 300,000 households and more than 250 million square feet (23,000 sq m) of space.
To learn more, visit www4.eere.energy.gov/challenge/.—M.S.
