Benchmarking Law Compliance

Step 1: Collect Building & Energy Data

Gather Your Building Information

Use the Montgomery County version of the Portfolio Manager Data Collection Worksheet to pre-assemble your information.

• Montgomery County Data Collection Template (MS Word, 96KB): This worksheet provides a quick overview of information you will need to benchmark your building in Portfolio Manager. 

Have Tenants?

Building owners must request any space data needed in writing to the tenant no later than March 31 of each compliance year. Tenants must respond within 30 days of a request, per the Benchmarking Law. 

• Use the Montgomery County Tenant Information Request Letter Template (MS Word, 99KB) to explain your request, list information you're seeking, and obtain tenant utility data using a data release form. Using this template is not required and is only meant as a guide. 

Gather Your Energy Data

You will need whole-building energy data from all your meters in order to benchmark properly in Portfolio Manager. There are two ways to obtain your energy data:

(1) Gather your utility bills

• If you are the account holder of all your meters and all your energy data is available to you, we recommend collecting your bills for manual input.  (Portfolio Manager also provides a bulk-upload option to easily upload multiple meters at the same time.)
• If you have tenants, you can request that they share/send their energy data to you for the purposes of benchmarking. Or, read below for information on requesting data from your utility/utilities.

(2) Request data from your utility/utilities

If you have multiple meters in your building, it is possible to request whole-building/aggregate data from your utilities for benchmarking purposes. This service is most beneficial to building owners with several buildings and more than 5 meters in each building, particularly where tenants pay the utility bills.

• If you have 5 or more meters, you can usually request whole-building/aggregate data without tenant authorization.
• If you have 4 or fewer meters, you can request data from your utility but must obtain authorization from tenants to obtain their energy data. Building owners will need to receive authorization from each tenant, which are available on each utility's energy benchmarking pages below.

Utility-Specific Information

• Pepco customers can find information on getting their Pepco data at Pepco Energy Benchmarking. Pepco’s Resource Advisor tool allows you to access electronic electricity consumption data using account and/or meter numbers and have it automatically loaded to Portfolio Manager every month. Building owners can learn more about the Resource Advisor tool by reviewing the overview document and fact sheet.
• Washington Gas customers with 5 or more meters can find information on getting their gas bill data at Washington Gas Energy Benchmarking.
  • For less than 5 meters, the customer of record must send a letter requesting the data and or authorizing its release to another party. This information can be sent to Customersupport@washgas.com or custsrv@washgas.com and must be received before or in concert with requesting data through Washington Gas Energy Benchmarking.
• BG&E offers information on getting electronic BGE energy data at Automated Benchmarking.  
• Potomac Edison account holders can log-in to their account on the First Energy website to retrieve their data electronically or email aggdata@firstenergycorp.com for commercial aggregated usage data requests. 

When to Request Utility Data

Step 2: Benchmark Your Building in Portfolio Manager

In order to streamline the process of benchmarking, the Benchmarking Law has identified U.S. EPA’s free, industry-standard ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager Tool as the standard software for benchmarking and reporting. Read about it at energystar.gov/benchmark.

Method 1: Do-It-Yourself Benchmarking

Portfolio Manager is built to be user-friendly and accessible for in-house staff to benchmark their buildings. In many cases, ENERGY STAR has found accounting, operations, and building management staff are entering data into Portfolio Manager. If you choose to Do-It-Yourself, below are some helpful tools to guide you.

Portfolio Manager Resources:

• Portfolio Manager Quick Start Guide (PDF, 508KB) offers the basics to setting up your Portfolio Manager account, including adding your property, entering your energy data, and seeing your results.
• Details on Entering Your Utility Bill Data (PDF, 567KB) walks you through the steps to set up a meter and correctly enter data, add data to an existing meter, complete spreadsheet uploads, and information on Web Services (automated benchmarking).
• Portfolio Manager Trainings offers both live and recorded webinars, written and video tutorials, and how-to’s for specific functions of the software.
• Portfolio Manager Technical Support offers expert advice and guidance on how to benchmark your building(s) in Portfolio Manager.

Montgomery County DEP is working very closely with ENERGY STAR and defers to their technical support for guidance in benchmarking in the software.  Benchmarking per the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager guidelines are a best practice for compliance with the Benchmarking Law.

Method 2: Hire an Energy Service Company to Benchmark

Benchmarking is a common and regular practice for any energy efficiency or conservation project. Montgomery County and the region are home to many energy service companies that offer an array of services to help you manage your energy use. Many of these same companies are experienced in benchmarking and can help you benchmark your building.

What to Look For in an Energy Service Company: DEP cannot endorse a particular company or business, but we recommend asking a few companies about their experience for benchmarking, their ability to help deliver energy savings, and other services they offer. You can ask for quotes from multiple companies, and they may be able to help you benchmark, and access to improve your building's energy performance. 

Where to Look for an Energy Service Company: DEP does not endorse a particular company or business, but we can direct you to existing lists of energy service companies that do similar work.

• Trade Ally Programs offer a list of companies that assist utilities with energy efficiency improvements, many of which can offer benchmarking services:
  • Pepco Trade Ally Program
  • BGE Service Providers
  • Potomac Edison Trade Ally Program

• ENERGY STAR Partners have a made a commitment with ENERGY STAR to support benchmarking and improving energy performance

• Montgomery County Benchmarking Ambassadors (PDF, 311 KB) attended a special 3-hour "train-the-trainer" taught by EPA ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager Staff, got the details about complying with Montgomery County's law, and learned how to access data from utilities.

Step 3: Data Verification

Verification is considered an industry best practice, and ensures that building and energy data entered into Portfolio Manager are accurate. The purpose of verification is to enhance the quality of data being reported collectively through the Benchmarking Law. Verification requires a second pair of eyes from someone with knowledge about Portfolio Manager and building energy performance.

The Benchmarking Law requires that building owners complete a verification process the first year of compliance and every 3 years after.

Buildings in Group 2 (50k sq. ft. up to 250k sq. ft.) that were first covered in CY 2016 and submitted by the 6/1/2017 deadline are now required to complete and report updated data verification information for CY 2019 data by 6/1/2020. Visit the data verification section of our site for more information. 

How to Complete Verification

The Recognized Data Verifier should review the Data Verification Checklist provided by Portfolio Manager (under the Reports Tab and in the top right box) and confirm the building profile information and meter data. The required verification does not include looking at water metrics or indoor air quality, nor does it require a site visit.

This Data Verification Checklist must be printed and signed and given to the building owner. This signed Verification Checklist does not need to be submitted to DEP, unless it is requested by DEP (DEP is authorized to request documentation). Therefore, building owners must retain the most recent signed Data Verification Checklist for at least three years.

Once verification is completed, please visit your property in Portfolio Manager and enter verifier information into the fields provided on the Details tab in Portfolio Manager. Instructions and screenshots for doing so are here.

For more information on how to complete verification, please review DEP’s How-to Guide for Data Verification (PDF, 160KB).

Acceptable Recognized Data Verifier Credentials

Building owners must demonstrate that reported benchmarking information is verified by a "Recognized Data Verifier." The following is a list of credentials that DEP has identified as acceptable to be a Recognized Data Verifier:

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¹ RPA must have been achieved with the elective course, Asset Management OR achieved with completion of at least 3 of the 5 Sustainability/High Performance Experience Criteria. 
²CPM must have been achieved with the following three functions selected and illustrated in the Experience Form: #3, #30, and #33.

Finding a Recognized Data Verifier

Building owners can use any in-house or third-party professional who holds an active credential listed on the Acceptable Verification Credentials list above. While DEP cannot recommend or refer you to a Recognized Data Verifier directly, we do have a list of Benchmarking Ambassadors – these volunteers have received training on the Benchmarking Law and Portfolio Manager, and some of the Ambassadors hold an acceptable Recognized Data Verifier credential.

Alternative Compliance Path

Alternatively, Covered buildings can meet the verification requirement if the owner can demonstrate that the building has achieved the ENERGY STAR building certification for at least 6 months of the calendar year being benchmarked.

If a building owner is using this verification path for a Covered building, please indicate this in the Property Notes field by stating “ENERGY STAR Certification used for verification” and the month and year certification was achieved.

Step 4: Reporting Data to the County

There are three groups of buildings required to benchmark and report data in Montgomery County.  ​*The Montgomery County law defines a covered building as a nonresidential building, or any group of nonresidential buildings that have the same property identification number, that meet the given thresholds and criteria. 

Before Reporting:

Prior to using this reporting link to report to DEP, be sure you have fulfilled the following requirements:

• Enter all energy and space use information in Portfolio Manager. Enter all data from January 1 - December 31 for the calendar year being reported for each property. 
• It is helpful to run Portfolio Manager's tool to check for possible data errors prior to using this template to ensure that you have no fatal errors in your data submission. The data Quality Checker timeframe should align with the calendar year being reported. 
• Identify your properties with your Montgomery County Building ID (MBID) in Portfolio Manager. 

Use our handy  Energy Benchmarking and Reporting Checklist ( PDF, 523 KB). This step-by-step checklist will ensure that you've followed all the right steps before reporting data to DEP. 

How to Report

Reporting to the County is easy once you’ve completed your benchmarking in Portfolio Manager. DEP provides a link each year to facilitate electronic reporting to the County through Portfolio Manager.  There will be a new reporting link for each compliance year.  Check the DEP Benchmarking website or sign up for the Commercial Energy News in the months preceding deadlines for the reporting link. After clicking the link, log-in to your Portfolio Manager account and follow the step-by-step instructions on the screen.

If you are an energy service company submitting benchmarking data on behalf of a Montgomery-County-based client, you must report that you are submitting data on behalf of someone else.

• ** Calendar Year 2021 Reporting Link for All Covered Buildings 50,000 Square Feet and Greater **

• ** Calendar Year 2020 Reporting Link for All Covered Buildings 50,000 Square Feet and Greater **

• ** Calendar Year 2019 Reporting Link for All Covered Buildings 50,000 Square Feet and Greater **

This link will take you to the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager account log-in screen—after logging in, you’ll see step-by-step instructions on the Data Request page. Data must be submitted to DEP no later than 11:59 pm Eastern on June 1 of the reporting year. 

After sending your data to DEP, retain the auto-generated confirmation email you’ll receive from Portfolio Manager, as well as the signed Data Verification Checklist from your recognized data verifier and other records related to the energy reporting process. DEP will review the data you reported to us and follow-up with any questions or recommendations.

After Reporting

If you need to make a change after you reported data, but before the deadline, go ahead and make your change and re-report your data to DEP. As long as it’s the same building in Portfolio Manager, the updated information will automatically replace what is reported to us. If it is after the deadline or you have older data to submit or update, please contact energy@montgomerycountymd.gov for the reporting link and so that  we can be sure to capture your most accurate data.

Making Corrections to your Benchmarking Report

Enforcement

The Benchmarking Law is enforceable under Method 2 regulations (including fines for noncompliance), and any violation of the law is a Class A violation. DEP will send out Notice of Violation to any building owner of a Covered building who does not comply with the Law. Note that DEP is available to assist any building owner to help them comply with the law.