Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Energy performance

Better Buildings Challenge Partners strive to decrease portfolio-wide source energy use intensity (EUI) and to increase the percent improvement compared to a set baseline. Massachusetts' portfolio consists of square footage from 43 separate state entities. *Massachusetts has improved energy performance by 25% from a 2009 baseline. Energy consumption during 2020 and 2021 was significantly lower than a typical year since COVID-19 disruptions resulted in temporary building closures and reduced occupancy for much of the year. Energy savings have been achieved during COVID-19 or prior to 2020 through an array of energy conservation projects across the state portfolio, including lighting retrofits, HVAC and efficiency upgrades at some of the portfolio’s largest properties, and replacement of older inefficient buildings with high-performing, low EUI buildings. A building-level real-time energy metering program has also expanded to help identify additional low-cost opportunities for savings.

Looking at the percent improvement in energy performance across all departments can provide insight into how an organization is saving energy. Massachusetts has achieved energy performance improvement between 2% and 10% within 12 departments and improvement of over 15% within 22 departments. In all, 35 of the 43 state entities have seen energy reductions from the baseline, demonstrating that energy reductions are broad and have occurred across the majority of the state's portfolio.

Department-level energy performance metrics, including EUI and percent improvement to date, are critical to track progress over time and identify opportunities for additional energy savings.