Building Benchmarking

In June of 2021, the State of Colorado enacted HB 21-1286 “Energy Performance for Buildings,” which requires owners of certain large buildings (covered buildings), on an annual basis, to collect and report to the Colorado Energy Office the covered building’s energy use. The act establishes a process requiring certain electric and gas utilities to provide energy-use data to a covered building owner when requested by the covered building owner.

To streamline the reporting process for covered building owners, SDCEA  will upload energy-use data from the covered building electric meter(s) directly to the EnergyStar Portfolio Manager software. Covered building owners will need to register with SDCEA to authorize this upload of energy-use data.

Registration for Covered Building Owners

  • Covered building owners are required to submit the Building Owner Request Form, and an Authorization for Release of Utility Information Form for each tenant if the building has fewer than four tenants, to begin the process of energy-use data uploads to the Portfolio Manager.
  • Once all required forms have been received, SDCEA will e-mail instructions for configuring your building benchmarking account in the EnergyStar Portfolio Manager.
  • After this registration process is completed and your Portfolio Manager account has been configured for SDCEA to share data with you, automated uploads of electric meter energy-usage data will be available on June 1st, 2022

For questions regarding building benchmarking or compliance with the law, please contact the Colorado Energy Office: 303-866-2100.

Registration Process

Pursuant to Colorado law, in order for building owners to provide the required benchmarking data to the state, SDCEA will provide the owners of buildings to which it provides electricity services the following types of information upon request: (i) the building’s monthly energy use; (ii) the building’s annual maximum electricity demand; and (iii) the building’s monthly peak electricity demand, from the SDCEA customer meter.

By submitting this request, you are agreeing not to disclose any information released to you by SDCEA (the “Data”) for any purpose except for the purpose of building benchmarking. You also agree (1) to take appropriate safeguards to protect the Data from unauthorized use, disclosure, or destruction; (2) to only use the Data for purposes of building benchmarking; (3) not to attempt to determine an individual utility customer’s energy use from aggregated Data; (4) not to use the Data for a secondary commercial purpose not related to the authorized use without first obtaining the customer’s consent; (5) to destroy the Data when it is no longer necessary for the purpose it was transferred; and (6) not to permit access to the Data by anyone that has not agreed to abide by the terms to which the Data was provided. You also agree that any recipient of the Data does not obtain any right, title or interest in any of the Data.

By submitting this request, you are also agreeing that you understand that if the building you own or are the associated contact for has less than four SDCEA customers, you are required to provide SDCEA with a completed authorization form from each customer in your building before SDCEA will release the Data to you. If your building contains three or fewer SDCEA customers, this request is not complete until SDCEA has received a completed authorization form from all SDCEA customers in your building. A copy of SDCEA’s standard Authorization is provided on the SDCEA Building Benchmarking webpage.

I understand that Colorado state law requires the owners of certain buildings to provide certain information regarding energy use of their buildings to the Colorado Energy Office. I understand that in order to comply with the statute, building owners need to obtain the information from utility companies like SDCEA. I understand that, in accordance with state law, the information provided by SDCEA for multi-customer buildings is aggregated for the entire building and therefore does not disclose the energy data for individual utility customers.

I understand that because my building has fewer than four utility customers, SDCEA requires the owner of my building to obtain my consent prior to SDCEA releasing my information to the building owner. The information that SDCEA may release to the building owner may include, but is not limited to, (i) the building’s monthly energy use (ii) annual m