In This Issue:

• Key Announcements
• New Better Buildings Challenge Approach for Assessing Multifamily Energy Savings
• Spotlight on Partner Success

Key Announcements

• The Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) has launched the “Scaling up Solar for Under-Resourced Communities Project.” This initiative is supported by a three-year funding award of $1.1 million from the US Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office. As part of the project, CESA and the Clean Energy Group (CEG) will work with housing developers/owners and community development lenders to replicate and expand loan guarantee and other foundation program-related investment models for solar and solar plus battery storage projects for multifamily affordable housing.
   
• Register for New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA’s) 2019 Multifamily Summit, October 21-23 in Tarrytown, NY. Join industry experts to learn about the latest energy programs, technologies, and incentives available for multifamily buildings.
   
• Thank you to our fall webinar attendees and featured speakers: Caitlin Rood, Ilene Mason, and Claire McLeish! A recording of the October 1st webinar on overcoming barriers to tenant data collection is now available.

New Better Buildings Challenge Approach for Assessing Multifamily Portfolio-Wide Energy Savings

However, obtaining energy data for tenant-paid utilities has presented unique and significant challenges for multifamily properties where tenants are responsible for some energy costs. Therefore, while partners are still encouraged to obtain and rely on whole-building energy data, DOE has new guidelines to incorporate properties where no tenant-paid data is available.

With the new approach, the program takes into account all properties with whole-building data available AND incorporates remaining properties that have only owner-paid data available (including common area use, owner-paid heating fuel use, etc.).

Benefits to this approach:

• Allows for the inclusion of all properties in program savings calculations,
• Provides greater insight into energy savings for properties reporting only owner-paid receipts, and
• Makes it more feasible to achieve a partner’s Better Buildings Challenge program goal.

In order to be eligible to display energy savings results on the Better Buildings Solution Center, or be eligible as a program Goal Achiever, the following whole-building data should be included:

• All master metered properties (required)
• All properties with access to utility provided aggregated whole building data (required)
• Any properties where sampled tenant energy data has been collected

Properties with whole-building data must represent at least 30 percent of a partner’s committed square footage.

Percent improvement in energy performance is calculated across the full portfolio. An average for properties with whole-building energy data and owner-paid energy data is determined, weighted by baseline energy use.

Another challenge in the multifamily sector is that not all properties have energy data back to the baseline year, often due to limited historical availability of aggregated whole-building data or sampled tenant energy data. To address this challenge, partners may consider using the program’s average annual percent improvement (AAPI) savings methodology, an approach that was designed for portfolios that experience significant change over time. Using this approach, the baseline year data for each property is the first year with complete data. The average annual percent improvement across the portfolio is computed based on the individual percent improvement values for each property, from the relevant baseline for that property, weighted by the baseline energy use of each property.

For more information on the new approach for assessing multifamily energy savings, please reach out to your Better Buildings Challenge Account Manager.

Spotlight on Partner Success

Preliminary data shows that the initiative may be contributing to energy and water savings results: by the end of 2018, Lucas MHA had reduced its portfolio-wide energy use intensity by 10 percent and its water use intensity by 34 percent from a 2015 baseline.