Public Housing Environmental & Conservation Clearinghouse

Energy Conservation

Energy conservation is the practice of decreasing the quantity of energy used. It may be achieved through efficient energy use, reduced consumption of energy services and use of renewable energy sources.

Energy conservation is an excellent way for Public Housing Agencies (PHA) to save on operating funds. It is often the most economical solution to energy shortages, and is a more environmentally benign alternative to increased energy production.

Energy Benchmarking Tool (MS-Excel, 769 KB)

Energy use benchmarking allows PHAs to assess each project’s energy consumption and easily target opportunities for reducing energy related utility costs for buildings or developments without rigorous or costly evaluations.

Energy Benchmarking is a helpful starting point for PHAs to identify buildings that are excessive energy users. This can help with the PHA’s overall asset management strategy as well as promote positive environmental benefits.

Use the Energy Benchmarking Tool (MS-Excel, 769 KB) to benchmark your properties’ energy use against your other buildings and against other PHA properties in your region. Your building will score from 0 – 100, where 0 means energy consumption is probably excessive and 100 means the property probably uses energy very efficiently. Generally, if your building scores 60 or less, there is lots of potential for cost effective energy-saving upgrades. Important: this is a whole-building tool. When inputting your energy use, make sure resident-paid energy use is included.

A benchmark is a standard by which something can be measured. Energy Benchmarking is the comparison of one building’s energy consumption to the use of energy in a similar building. HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) has developed a preliminary benchmarking tool to establish if a building’s energy consumption is higher or lower than expected energy usage for similar buildings. The benchmarking tool is self-explanatory but the user’s guide provides direction if needed.

The Energy Benchmarking Tool requires that a few data fields be entered, and it calculates that building’s (or development’s) energy consumption benchmark. In order to develop the energy consumption benchmarking tool, energy consumption data was collected through voluntary release of information from over 9,100 buildings in nearly 350 PHAs nationwide. Regression analyses were performed on these datasets to see which of over 30 characteristics were most closely linked to energy conservation. The benchmarking models were then developed by quantifying the effects of the building traits that most commonly correlated with energy consumption.

Although regression model-based benchmarking is not a perfect science, it provides a good indication of a particular building’s energy efficiency.

The Energy Benchmarking Tool is still under development. PIH is interested in your input. Try the working copy of the Energy Benchmarking Tool to see how well it operates. To help improve this tool please report your experiences to pheccinfo@deval.us to share your results and thoughts on reporting data, development and accuracy. You may access the Energy Benchmarking Tool at the following link: Energy Benchmarking Tool (MS-Excel, 769 KB).