A new numerical assessment can help multifamily owners quickly and easily understand their buildings' energy usage.
WegoScore, a rating of apartment building performance, provides a clear snapshot of a building’s utility usage, enabling property owners to prioritize retrofits, better manage their portfolios and communicate building efficiency to tenants.
“A WegoScore is the simplest useful indicator of building efficiency,” explains Barun Singh, founder of WegoWise, developer of the new tool. “It allows proactive building owners to showcase their efforts and, at a glance, raises broader awareness about building performance."
Building on the progress of LEED and other green certifications, WegoScore grades all aspects of buildings’ ongoing utility performance rather than a building’s design or construction. WegoWise claims to have the largest collection of multifamily building performance data in the world—including over 2.6 million utility bills tracked to date—allowing it the unique capability to create an accurate efficiency rating.
The company assesses buildings for three separate WegoScores: energy, water and carbon. The scoring algorithm examines the normalized usages for buildings of a given type (high-rise, low-rise, etc.) in a particular climate. A building is given a WegoScore from 1-100 based on where it falls in the resulting distribution.
A WegoScore condenses numerous complex measurements of building performance into one number, says WegoWise CEO Andrew Chen, and can highlight superior asset management practices to financial markets.
Property management firm Maloney Properties has benefited from WegoWise data, says John Magee, the company's assistant facilities director. After tracking and benchmarking its buildings with WegoWise, the Massachusetts firm targeted $2.5 million in retrofits, and expects to save 10 percent to 20 percent on related utility costs annually.
WegoWise customers can access their WegoScore online through their standard account login, and will receive WegoScore decals for their high-performing buildings.
