Ontario residential/commercial building owners owning 100,000 sq/ft or larger are required to report the building’s energy and water use by July 1, 2019.
The reporting obligation is for the global and annual consumption of electricity, water, and gas.
This is a first step into understanding buildings energy performance and water consumption, while it does not require any detailed reports, owners will only have to look at their utility providers or at their invoices for the annual information required.
Building owners with modern sub-metering systems will have an advantage over other owners without them, simply because modern sub-metering systems can provide customization to download periodic reports at the push of a button.
The ENERGY STAR portal will act as a centralized repository that collects all the reports to produce a benchmark. Ontario’s new Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking regulation (EWRB) is designed to enhance performance and allow building owners to measure their own usage against industry consumption.
Role of Energy Reporting Program
The intent is that the energy reporting and bench-marking will assists building owners and managers to:
- Determine how their buildings perform in comparison to other similar structures
- Determine opportunities for improving energy and water efficiency
- Track consumption to save money
- Monitor and break down energy consumption in a way that informs them when and where energy waste occurs in buildings.
Where it will fall short is that the figures will be historical and annualized; here lies the benefit of accurate real time monitoring, because a sub-metering system with an energy analysis software can provide the granular data that can identify the user, or the area where excess consumption took place and the time when it happened. precious information that allows owners and property managers determine how to approach energy or water saving strategies.
The EWRB initiative will be phased by 2020, and once complemented, will require most building owners (with properties larger than 50,000 sq/ft) to report their greenhouse emission data and energy and water use annually.
For more info on the Ontario Regulation 506/18 from the Energy Act 2018: visit https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/180506
Energy Benchmarking
In the United States, some of the jurisdictions that have energy benchmarking requirements similar to EWRB have measured decreases in energy usage of up to 10%. These include large cities, such as New York and Chicago, and many buildings in these areas have taken steps to improve their performance.
Supporting Energy Benchmarking with Submetering
Advanced sub-metering technology can help bring better decisions when it comes to optimizing a building’s energy performance, help eliminate the source of wasted energy and compare the building’s energy usage across similar structures at different or same periods in time. With sub-metering technology, you can meet and exceed the green requirements.
