by Brianna Crandall — March 27, 2015—On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its seventh-annual list of the top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas with the most Energy Star certified buildings in 2014. This year, Washington, DC, debuts in the top spot with 480 buildings. EPA’s Energy Star Top Cities list shows how city leaders and building owners and managers across America, with help from Energy Star, are embracing energy efficiency as an effective way to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change.
More than 25,000 buildings across America have earned Energy Star certification since 1999. The buildings have saved nearly $3.4 billion on utility bills and prevented greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions from the annual electricity use of nearly 2.4 million homes, estimates EPA.
Energy use in commercial buildings accounts for 17 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of more than $100 billion per year, according to EPA. Energy Star certified buildings are verified to perform better than 75 percent of similar buildings nationwide, and they use an average of 35 percent less energy and are responsible for 35 percent fewer emissions than typical buildings. Many common building types can earn the Energy Star, including office buildings, K-12 schools, hotels, and retail stores.
Upgrades
The program starts with tools to help building owners or managers understand how their buildings are currently performing and what to aim for in terms of improvements. A typical upgrade includes the following: tuning up the building systems; reducing lighting loads; reducing supplemental loads (e.g., equipment, wasteful behaviors, leaky windows, poor insulation, etc.); improving air distribution systems; and making upgrades to heating and cooling equipment.
Stages
The stages, when followed in order, account for the interactions between different building systems, explains the agency. For example, replacing heat-producing incandescent bulbs with cool compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs) will mean that a building’s air conditioner will not have to work as hard in the summer months, so a building may be able to downsize its cooling system based on the new lighting’s heat output.
The five-stage approach also ensures the lowest-cost measures are tackled first. As organizations progress through the five stages, they can roll their cost savings into larger and larger investments, culminating in the last, most expensive stage. By the time organizations start making upgrades to heating and cooling equipment, they typically have already amassed substantial cost savings from previous lower-cost improvements.
Top Cities
To create the annual top cities list, EPA tallies the number of Energy Star-certified buildings for the end of the previous year within each metropolitan area, as defined by the U.S. Census. These areas include the city itself as well as surrounding towns and suburbs.
The Top 25 Cities (metro areas) with their 2014 building count are:
- Washington, DC — 480
- Los Angeles, CA — 475
- Atlanta, GA — 328
- New York, NY — 299
- San Francisco, CA — 292
- Chicago, IL — 251
- Dallas-Fort Worth, TX — 248
- Houston, TX — 235
- Denver, CO — 195
- Boston, MA — 176
- Phoenix, AZ — 165
- Philadelphia, PA — 158
- Seattle, WA — 149
- Riverside, CA — 127
- Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN — 122
- Charlotte, NY — 95
- San Diego, CA — 92
- Miami, FL — 90
- Sacramento, CA — 89
- Virginia Beach, VA — 81
- Detroit, MI — 80
- San Jose, CA — 70
- Austin, TX — 65
- Portland, OR — 65
- Louisville, KY — 59
- Tampa, FL — 59
- Salt Lake City, UT — 55
The Top 25 Cities Web page also features lists of the Top Mid-Size Cities and Top Small Cities. Readers can learn more about earning the Energy Star label for existing commercial buildings, and search for specific Energy Star Certified Buildings and Plants from the Energy Star site.
