OREANDA-NEWS. Congress has paved the way to take U.S. building efficiency to a whole new level. They have passed the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015, a bipartisan bill that most notably directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to create a tenant-focused version of the successful ENERGY STAR building efficiency program.

According to a recent Greenbiz article, the new initiative, which gives EPA the option of calling the new program Tenant Star, is being hailed by a wide range of industry stakeholders as the next great tool for driving energy savings in commercial buildings.

Tenant leased spaces typically represent 50% or more of a building’s overall energy use, presenting often overlooked energy savings opportunities. To unlock the market potential and reduce the estimated $20B spent annually on commercial office buildings’ energy use, a comprehensive building efficiency program is essential. Tenant Star would complement the widely recognized whole building ENERGY STAR label and address often overlooked energy savings in leased spaces through cooperation between commercial building owners and operators and tenants.

ENERGY STAR is already helping more than 400,000 commercial building measure, track, assess, and report their energy and water use and as of 2012, a program benchmark showed an average of 7% of whole building energy savings over a period of three years.

But as owners become more sophisticated about managing energy use in their buildings, they are finding that tenant’s plug and process loads — from refrigerators, computers, printers, and other tenant space items — are becoming the fastest-growing category of energy use in office buildings today. So while owners are investing millions to have high-performing buildings, tenant and occupant behavior may be off-setting the savings and undoing all their good work!

The proposed Tenant Star program could help secure owner investments by providing a federally funded engagement platform to present to prospective tenants. According to the article, the program’s savings potential is staggering. Based on the amount of leased office space in the U.S. and their plug loads, just a 15% savings in tenant spaces could be worth almost a billion dollars in avoided energy costs.

While the bill has paved the way for this new program, it didn’t actually provide any funding, so there is a long road ahead for Tenant Star to be launched. And there are other issues as well, including accurate energy usage data sourcing for the new program as the vast majority of leased office spaces are not sub- or separately metered. However, there are potential solutions for all the obstacles, but realizing the program and its benefits will require sustained effort over time.

But the potential of this proposed program is huge — it could cut utility bills for landlords and tenants by an estimated $2B by 2030 and reduce carbon emissions by nearly 12M metric tons! Some leading owners and managers already understand this and have solid tenant engagement programs in place. But for many owners and managers, the establishment of Tenant Star could provide greater motivation for them to develop a tenant engagement plan that tackles reducing energy use.