The Challenge
The City realized that more carefully managing their own building portfolio would be the way to demonstrate leadership by example in their community. They have identified key strategies to accomplish their carbon goals. A full-time staff is responsible for establishing a data monitoring and reporting system and developing a budget and financing strategy. However, Missoula was still lacking a mechanism to identify inefficient buildings, prioritize upgrades and guide policy.
The Solution
With help from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), the City of Missoula took their commitment to energy efficiency to a new level. The NEEA project team partnered with the city to undertake a comprehensive approach to efficiency in the city’s municipal portfolio. The team, including New Buildings Institute (NBI), EcoEdge, and Maalka, worked with City staff to benchmark their municipal buildings and develop priorities for portfolio management and performance upgrades. This process engaged multiple departments, policymakers, and other stakeholders, forming the basis for meaningful discussions of broader city energy goals, and leading to a more comprehensive approach to building management for the city.
Over a series of facilitated meetings, the project team created a plan that established an energy team, developed quantitative metrics for energy efficiency improvements, and consolidated the approaches into one working document to guide the team to success.
One key aspect of Public Buildings Portfolio Management is the use of remote diagnostics to better understand building performance issues and establish priorities for improvement. The team used the Energy Star Portfolio Manager tool to benchmark performance. Benchmarking is the practice of tracking, measuring and comparing the performance of buildings. While the initial building inventory included 65 city facilities for further analysis, the team benchmarked 33 of these buildings in Portfolio Manager and focused more detailed analysis on a subset of 19 buildings.
The Results
The Public Buildings Portfolio Management plan has given the city the impetus for a cultural and organizational change. The formation of an energy team with a full time employee is an important aspect of driving the energy efficiency goals forward. Department heads, policymakers and the Mayor are now more open to making improvements in City buildings. They also have a better understanding of the important of energy performance in the City’s portfolio. This cultural acceptance has given the Energy Conservation Coordinator, Chase Jones, the approval to begin the engagement of an Energy Services Company to conduct assessments of high priority buildings and implement projects.
This process also allowed the City to focus its resources on the best opportunities for performance improvement, even before they did expensive site assessments. By identifying significant energy users and buildings with performance that was out of line with comparable facilities, the City was able to prioritize analysis and upgrade resources on the subset of buildings that represented the most significant opportunity for performance improvement.
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