Getting The Whole Story

Yardi Drives Energy Insights

By Joel Nelson on Mar 11, 2025 in Energy

Across the U.S., commercial and residential property owners are required to comply with ENERGY STAR® energy benchmarking and transparency policies. In these jurisdictions, metrics ranging from electricity usage per square foot to greenhouse gas emission volumes must be reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®, the most widely used energy reporting compliance system in North America.

Gathering data

Gathering the volume of required energy consumption and billing data and submitting it can be daunting. This is especially true for property management staff who are short on time or energy expertise.

Fortunately, clients using the Yardi Energy Suite can draw on resources at every stage of the process. “We have many creative ways to get whole building data that aren’t available from most other property management software providers,” said Christy Cannon, a solutions consultant for Yardi Energy.

For example, Energy Efficiency offers a cost-effective alternative to shadow metering. This method tracks individual energy usage in multi-tenant buildings by reading tenants’ utility meters for accurate billing. The data, along with common area usage from utility bills, is pushed into Portfolio Manager and used to generate a performance score.

“Along with generating a score, the data can produce some really good metrics that help building owners understand their performance,” Cannon said.

Bringing clarity with meters & dashboards

Yardi’s manual utility meter reading service can read resident or tenant utility meters monthly, bimonthly, quarterly or at other intervals. Monthly or bimonthly readings allow the property to apply for ENERGY STAR Building Certification. A mobile meter reading app transfers the data into a dashboard where it’s aggregated into whole building data. “This approach provides a granular look at consumption, and we can separate common areas from tenant areas for greater clarity,” Cannon said.

Another approach involves Yardi field service teams installing submeters to monitor electricity, water and other consumption. Along with being pushed to Portfolio Manager to complete ESG reporting, this tactic lets property owners see which building occupiers use the most energy. It can show which ones might have a water leak and immediately arrange for maintenance service.

Yardi collects data, but it also help property owners make sense of the numbers. For instance, a whole-building dashboard with individual utility billing and meter reading data helps property owners track and meet their sustainability goals. Meanwhile, commercial property tenants can use an occupant engagement dashboard to gain real-time submeter usage and consumption data.

“Yardi Energy can help our clients understand different data sources and make sure they’re not double-counting their consumption. We have benchmarked thousands of properties and supported hundreds of ENERGY STAR building certifications across the country. We can meet any set of requirements in any compliance program. That way, property owners can avoid significant financial penalties for non-compliance,” Cannon said.

Want to know more? See how Yardi’s reporting and analytics solutions assit with energy performance compliance.