The potential demise of the US building energy rating programme Energy Star is prompting owners of commercial real estate to look for alternative platforms.
Measurabl, which offers real estate sustainability performance software, announced today that it had attracted 5,000 buildings, covering 92m sqm (or close to 1bn sqft) of space within four weeks of launching a free-to-use service.
The Donald Trump administration is reportedly considering ending the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star certification platform, which includes the free-to-use Portfolio Manager, which has been used to benchmark nearly 35bn sqft of commercial real estate and more than 330,000 buildings.
Measurabl said it “fast-tracked” the launch of the free solution to “answer a call to action for investment-grade data and bolster support for Energy Star, which is currently under threat of termination”.
Cambio, another software provider, also recently launched Cambio Vault, a free alternative to Energy Star Portfolio Manager “in response to mounting uncertainty over the future of the EPA’s widely used building benchmarking tool”.
Measurabl said it had seen the fastest adoption to its platform in its 13-year history, following the launch of the free tool, through which owners can track energy, water, waste and carbon.
Boston Properties (BXP), one of the largest office real estate investment trusts in the US, has thrown its weight behind the Measurabl platform. Ben Myers, senior vice president of sustainability, described it as “a game-changer for property owners and managers”.
He said: “At a time when the future of Energy Star is uncertain, Measurabl provides a streamlined, globally scalable platform for safeguarding and analysing key performance indicators. This move reduces barriers, enables participation and strengthens the critical link between transparency and value in real estate.”
Measurabl said it was looking to build a “broad industry coalition” to “ensure investment-grade data and effective, scalable solutions are available to all the key players in the real estate industry – from owners and operators to governments and consultants”.
Measurabl CEO Matt Ellis said: “The world has changed. We need to align sustainability with business value in a much more direct, measurable way. To do that, the real estate industry needs easier access to data, the tools to interpret it, and greater accuracy all at far lower cost. Paywalls have to come down.”
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) also lent support to the platform. Ali Zaidi, global head of real assets at LSEG said: “The rising requirement to systematically channel flows towards companies and assets with unambiguous sustainability credentials is not only prudent risk-management but speaks to the long-term viability of investment.
“Measurabl’s groundbreaking asset-level approach enables FTSE Russell to create benchmarks with quantifiable sustainability uplift and contributes towards our shared goal of greening of the built environment.”
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