Energy Star Portfolio Manager
Purpose: this provides an overview of the required uses and configurations of Energy Star Portfolio Manager for compliance reporting and an introduction to further resources.
Audience: Facilities operations and maintenance administrators and data managers.
Energy Star Portfolio Manager is a free, online platform designed to track and measure building resource consumption - energy, water, and waste.
Washington's 2009 State Agency Energy Benchmarking law, the 2019 Clean Buildings Performance Standard, and Seattle's 2025 Building Emissions Performance Standard all require colleges to track and report their energy consumption through Portfolio Manager.
There are some subtle differences between the requirements of each law, which requires some attention and forethought when setting up Portfolio Manager. If done right, the same properties can be used to meet all compliance reporting for most campuses and/or buildings. Take the time to ensure that whomever configures the college's Portfolio Manager account understands all of the reporting requirements relevant to that campus or building!
There are three sets of actions necessary to use Portfolio Manager as required.
SETUP - Define/configure all appropriate properties, both buildings and campuses are required, a district energy system property may also be required in special cases. Property configuration includes name, address, gross floor area, property use type, relevant ID#'s, energy meters, and active energy data feeds.
Once configured, most property records will only require periodic maintenance to adjust energy data, meter ID's, or building size/status.
DATA MANAGEMENT - Many WA utilities can provide automated energy data imports into Portfolio Manager, and many building smart meters may be configured to do the same. Not every college will be able to rely upon automated data imports, and it's also common for automated data feeds to fail or be corrupted. No automated system is perfectly reliable.
It's critical that college staff establish a practice of checking Portfolio Manager regularly. Watch for red exclamation points and notices as shown in the images below.
This practice should be an element of the college's Energy Management plan, as total energy consumption is tracked and reported across the year.
REPORTING - Reporting cycles vary between the different laws. State Agency Energy Benchmarking reports are drawn every two years, Clean Buildings compliance is scheduled for 5-year cycles, and Seattle's BEPS will also be on a 5-year compliance schedule. Each report relies upon 12 or 24 months of recent, complete, energy consumption data.
The required property details recorded in Portfolio Manager include:
- Property Name and address
- Gross Floor Area (total interior conditioned space)
- Property Use Type - this should be "College/University", which includes all common instructional and service spaces on a college campus.
- Standard ID - should include both the State Uniform Facility Identifier (UFI) and the WA Building ID assigned by the Department of Commerce for Clean Buildings compliance.
- Parent Property(s), if applicable.
- Energy meters and consumption data for each meter.
It is also necessary to share properties for compliance and support purposes. Share with:
- WASTATEPUBLICCOLLEGES - for support and guidance (State Board staff)
- WASTATEGENERALADMINISTRATION - campus properties only required, for State Agency Benchmarking reports (Dept of Enterprise Services staff)
- WACLEANBUILDINGS - for Clean Buildings reporting (Commerce Clean Buildings Portal)
The State Board provides support and guidance effective required use of Portfolio Manager, see our Megamation page and reach out with any questions.
EPA provides an extensive library of training and process guides in their HELP pages, and there are multiple other references available from the EPA and others, see the following for some specific guides.
- Benchmark Buildings in Energy Star Portfolio Manager
- ESPM Training Resources
- ESPM Searchable How-to
- ESPM Log in
- DES State Agency Benchmarking program
- Dept of Commerce - Using Energy Star Portfolio Manager for compliance
- Basics of using ESPM to comply with energy benchmarking ordinances.
- Process to transfer Property Data Ownership from a person who’s left the college.
- Best Practice for Organizational-level Property Administration.
- Maintaining a ‘corporate’ account.
- Transfer building ownership in ESPM.
- How to benchmark a campus.
- Parent (campus) properties may not be nested.
- Child (building) properties can be attached to multiple campus parents, however.
- How to share a property with support and reporting agents.
- Each ESPM property must be shared with other users individually.
- Child property details are not collected into the campus parent property.
- Campus properties only use the meter data directly connected to that property, not anything from the attached building properties.
- Child property metrics are not automatically calculated into the Parent property metrics.
