by Brianna Crandall — August 23, 2013—Ecova, a total energy and sustainability management company, has announced a new regulatory reporting service to help large enterprises with numerous facilities spread across various locations meet complex and varied reporting needs arising across the United States. Ecova is launching a new service to help multisite clients keep up with the new and changing regulations, maintain compliance, and avoid fines in cities including Austin, Boston, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC, and the entire states of California and Washington.
In the past year, the eight cities and two states mentioned above have been impacted by new legislation that requires energy reporting for buildings that meet certain qualifications. In an effort to drive down energy consumption and promote sustainability, new legislation requires reporting through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) voluntary ENERGY STAR program. This trend is expected to continue, with several additional cities and multiple states expressing interest or considering similar requirements. Additionally, the minimum size of buildings required to report is trending lower. As the largest ENERGY STAR reporting provider, benchmarking more than 40,000 buildings each month in ENERGY STAR, Ecova is well-suited to provide this service to clients, claims the company.
“With the added requirements for ENERGY STAR reporting, we simply do not have the internal resources or expertise to handle these growing and changing needs. With differences in the reporting cycles, building size, and number of cities requiring reporting it’s difficult to staff for and stay up-to-date on new and changing legislation,” said Alan Grossman, CFO of Operations for Public Storage. “The right solution for us was to leverage our existing relationship with Ecova to have them handle the reporting requirements. Ecova has our energy database already — and is a valued ENERGY STAR partner. It has been very simple for us to turn this over to Ecova and let them use the reporting platform to assure we will be in compliance.”
ENERGY STAR reporting provides an opportunity to benchmark buildings, which brings visibility into how sites are performing. This kind of benchmarking is a great first step in targeting those sites that should be reviewed further and potentially designated for efficiency improvement or best practice recommendations. ENERGY STAR reporting will provide multisite companies with visibility into building performance relative to similar building types by industry and provides focus for energy efficiency efforts.
“Several studies have shown that setting benchmarks and comparing against peer groups leads to greater efficiency improvements,” said Bob Zak, senior vice president, facility solutions, Ecova. “Working with companies like Public Storage, we are reducing energy consumption in buildings across the country. Our long history and expertise with ENERGY STAR reporting shows that benchmarking works to reduce energy use, and we are excited for the increased impact these new regulations can have on energy efficiency.”
Ecova is a total energy and sustainability management company whose sole purpose is to “see more, save more, and sustain more” for its clients. Using insights based on consumption, cost and carbon footprint data spanning thousands of utilities, hundreds of thousands of business sites and millions of households, Ecova provides fully managed, technology-optimized solutions for saving resources, which in turn are said to increase returns, lower risks, and enhance reputations. Ecova is the largest non-regulated subsidiary of Avista Corp.
