Mayor Menino wants building owners in Boston to collect data on their energy use and lay it at his feet. The mayor, who has pledged to make Boston the greenest city in America, is playing catch-up with San Francisco, New York, and other cities that require building owners to report water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. But Menino is also playing around with property values and the privacy of tenants.
The proposed ordinance would cover existing commercial buildings larger than 25,000 square feet and residential buildings with 25 or more units. Owners would be required to use a federal EPA software tool — Energy Star Portfolio Manager — to track their buildings’ overall energy use and that of their tenants. The information would then be converted into an energy performance rating — measured against a national benchmark — on a scale of 1 to 100. City Hall would post the ratings online. And owners and tenants who fail to report would face fines.
Comments
I don't get it. What exactly is your complaint about privacy. These are commercial and multi-unit apartment buildings. As a tenant in an apartment building, how is my right to privacy if the building management reports how much energy is being used *by the entire building.* I don't believe they'll be breaking out energy use by individual tenants.
Not getting it? Simple, to collect that data, every tenant has to be monitored. Remember, there is not one big meter for each building. It is none of the city's or the landlord's business how much energy a particular tenant is using.
This type of thing will lead to some sort of "action" on the part of the city, otherwise, what is the point? Will the city then go after individual tenants? More than likely.
You have a serious case of paranoia.
Buildings consume between 70% and 80% of all the energy used in Boston. It only makes sense to gather data on the largest energy use in the city to understand how to set priorities and where we can save the most money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. New York City's benchmarking program has been a great success - and has yielded many surprising results - like 2% of the buildings are responsible for 45% of the city's greenhouse gas emissions. They also discovered that the most efficient public building was built in 1933. Surprise!
Lawrence Berkely Labs conducted the largest study on the benefits of assessing energy performance and found that existing buildings on average lowered energy costs 16% with a 1.1 year payback time. Buildings that completed comprehensive assessments were able to double those results on average.
http://cx.lbl.gov/2009-assessment.html