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Monday, March 8, 2021 | Department of Environmental Protection
Owners of nonresidential buildings that are 50,000 gross square feet or greater must provide energy usage data to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) each year, under the Montgomery County’s Building Energy Benchmarking Law. Calendar year 2020 energy use data must be reported by Tuesday, June 1, 2021.
You can find step-by-step instructions, answers to frequently asked questions, and more on DEP’s benchmarking website.
Read on for step-by-step guidance on submitting a successful benchmarking report.
 Property use details should be reviewed and updated each year to ensure ENERGY STAR scores and other benchmarking metrics are accurately calculated. As COVID-19 changed the way many buildings were operated in 2020, it is even more important to make updates to property use details this year.
In particular, Weekly Operating Hours and Number of Workers on Main Shift will need to be updated for most property types.
For more information, please review DEP’s instructions and step-by-step guidance for updating use details.
Your utility can help you collect energy data. The utility data aggregation service is especially beneficial to building owners with several buildings and many meters, particularly where tenants pay the utility bills. Utilities will provide whole-property, aggregated data, and in many cases sync it with Portfolio Manager automatically.
- If you have 5 or more meters, you can request whole-building/aggregate data without tenant authorization.
- If you have 4 or fewer meters, you can request data from your utility but must obtain authorization from any tenants to obtain their energy data.
Utility benchmarking pages and contacts:
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 Data verification is required the first year of reporting and every three years thereafter. Properties that last had calendar year 2017 data verified are due to complete and report updated data verification information with this year’s submission. When submitting 2020 benchmarking data be sure to double check whether you are due for data verification.
To better track data verification, the EPA has added additional data verification fields to Portfolio Manager. For more information, please review DEP’s instructions and step-by-step guidance with screenshots for entering verification details. If these new fields are not populated, DEP may consider benchmarking reports with outdated verification information as non-compliant.
When you're ready to send data, you must use this link to submit your completed report to the County: **Calendar Year 2020 Reporting Link for All Covered Buildings 50,000 Square Feet and Greater**. This link will take you to the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager account log-in screen—after logging in, you’ll see step-by-step instructions on the Data Request page.
You will generate a report preview via the link above and then choose to "Send Response" to DEP. Review pages 13 – 16 in our Official Benchmarking Guide for step-by-step guidance with screen shots.
This link is always available on the benchmarking website.
DEP encourages building owners to report benchmarking data as normal to avoid gaps in data and so that we may analyze changes to the Montgomery County building stock brought about by COVID-19. However, if your property had average physical occupancy less than 50% throughout 2020, you may opt to file a waiver application and can do so any time between now and May 1, 2021 at https://forms.gle/zXs5eoXCzbq2GLtd8.
Please email our Benchmarking Help Desk at energy@montgomerycountymd.gov for help or with questions. We are happy to schedule a call or screen-share to troubleshoot and help you comply.
Benchmarking Education
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March 10 | US EPA Webinar
Portfolio Manager 201 a deeper dive into more advanced functionalities such as: editing property data; correcting and updating property use details; using the data quality checker; and sharing property data.
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March 17 | US EPA Webinar
Ask the Expert live webinar that gives all users an opportunity to ask their questions directly to EPA experts in an open forum
- Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection Benchmarking Webinars:
Saving Energy
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