by Brianna Crandall — February 3, 2016—The expansion of benchmarking initiatives around the country has developed a pathway to bring building performance information into the era of Big Data. However, this major expansion of data needs to be organized, managed, and accessible to make the kind of discoveries that this new information allows. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has long recognized this need through its development of the Standardized Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) Platform to help cities and states manage their building stock’s energy information.
The early success and adoption of the SEED Platform led to the launch of the SEED Platform Collaborative, a formal user group. At launch, Atlanta, Berkeley, Cambridge, California Energy Commission, Houston, Kansas City, Montgomery County, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Washington, DC, were all selected for a three-year partnership to receive technical assistance and access to a peer community to share best practices.
Cliff Majersik, executive director of the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), commented:
These jurisdictions have demonstrated their leadership in cultivating the expansion of building energy performance data to facilitate the reduction in energy use of buildings over the past few years, and it is no surprise that they have continued that leadership by joining the SEED Platform Collaborative.
The SEED Platform has proven to be a valuable resource for jurisdictions to store, share, and analyze the influx of new data that has been made available by benchmarking policies and programs. SEED not only saves staff time and aids in ensuring that data is high quality, it stimulates innovation by software developers. The Collaborative adds another layer of support among users to expand the Platform’s capabilities and encourage even more jurisdictions to adopt the software.
IMT has joined the SEED Collaborative as a key Ally to recognize these jurisdictions for their leadership in this critical effort. The group also would like to acknowledge the representation of the many cities featured here that are participating in the City Energy Project, a joint initiative with the National Resource Defense Council, as well as New York City and Washington, DC, where IMT has had longstanding close relationships that have continued with its partnerships in the DOE-supported Putting Data to Work project.
DOE Technology Manager and Lead of the SEED Platform Elena Alschuler added:
We are looking forward to working with IMT through the SEED Collaborative to advance data-driven policymaking and business decisions around energy performance in buildings.
IMT recognizes that the work of collecting, managing and analyzing data is challenging yet crucial to achieving building sustainability goals. They are playing an important role in stimulating the conversation around this topic, and helping practitioners develop and share practical solutions.
