Building Performance Standards
Resource Libarary

Explore our curated collection of Builiding Performance Standards Resources to help policy makers create meaningful standards and building owners effectively understand and implement them.

Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards Policy Toolkit

This toolkit from the EPA is meant to support jurisdictions seeking to decarbonize their building stock through policy. The toolkit includes four sections, each with their own focus: an overview of benchmarking and transparency, an overview of building performance standards (BPS), coordination of benchmarking and BPS for state and local governments, and data access. EPA staff encourages policymakers and other relevant players to get in touch for support - particularly concerning data access and Portfolio Manager use in BPS.

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Benchmarking Policies and Building Performance Standards: EPA Resources

This landing page includes resources for developing benchmarking policies and building performance standards (BPS), including guidance for getting started and considering complementary policies, as well as technical assistance for benchmarking policies, utility data access, setting goals and evaluating impacts, and developing BPS frameworks, metrics, and targets.

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Recommended Metrics and Normalization Methods for Use in State and Local Building Performance Standards

This document describes EPA's recommendations for building performance standards (BPS) metrics to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, it discusses normalization methods for these metrics, and outlines future resources EPA will produce to support BPS policy design and implementation.

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Resources for the Future

Leading by Example: Building Performance Standards for Decarbonizing Federal Buildings

This report considers the options for implementing a building performance standard across a broader scope of buildings and geography than a single city or state: federally owned or leased buildings, which comprise 1 billion square feet across the country.

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Resources for the Future

Building Performance Standards: Lessons from Carbon Policy

This report assesses the various tradeoffs and challenges of designing building performance standards (BPS) in order to facilitate compliance and promote cost-effectiveness.

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White Paper on Understanding and Choosing Metrics for Building Performance Standards and Zero-Carbon Recognition

This white paper provides a framework and supporting analysis to help policymakers and commercial and multifamily building stakeholders understand the key differences among performance metrics and choose those best suited to building performance standard policies. The paper also proposes a complementary zero-carbon building recognition.

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Developing Performance Standards

While performance elements tell employees what they have to do, the standards tell them how well they have to do it. The first article in this series defined and reviewed the characteristics of critical, non-critical, and additional performance elements. This article reviews the principles of writing good standards that can be used effectively to appraise employee performance of those elements.

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ENERGY STAR Certification

Overview of EPA’s ENERGY STAR certification for buildings and a description of the energy performance standards set by EPA.

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ENERGY STAR Energy Performance Scorecard

Overview of the scorecard that offers a quick snapshot of a building’s energy performance, displaying either the building’s 1-100 ENERGY STAR score or site EUI.

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Tools for State, Local, and Tribal Governments

Additional Tools

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OUTCOME-BASED CODES FOR CITIES

This document provides jurisdictions with a new approach to shift their focus towards actual, measurable energy results and provides guidance for incorporating an outcome-based compliance path into current energy codes. The guide includes draft regulatory language as a framework around which jurisdictions can begin to align their energy goals through their building codes

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Building Energy Benchmarking and Transparency: Overview for State and Local Decision Makers

EPA’s Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards Policy Toolkit aims to inform and support state and local government decision makers who are exploring policies to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing commercial and multifamily buildings in their communities. This section of the toolkit focuses on building energy benchmarking and transparency policies. It provides information about what is needed for these policies, lists key considerations for success, and demonstrates how government leaders have used benchmarking as an initial step for enacting building performance standards. The toolkit includes four sections—each intended to build on the previous section— that focus on different aspects of policy development

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