available online, that allows each utility to upload whole-building consumption data for the past 15 months into Portfolio Manager. The building owner now has their property’s energy use data accessible online, and links to it using the meter number provided by the utility. Several utilities set up ‘virtual meters’ to aggregate whole-building data, when no single meter exists for the whole building. This Automated Benchmarking service is available from all major utilities – gas, electric, and steam. Apart from Automated Benchmarking, a building owner can also enter their data manually if they wish for whatever reason. With benchmarking complete, the building owner authorizes the City of Seattle to download the benchmark report (Seattle DPD 2011). Each April, the City will collect the reports for all covered buildings; these reports include the building’s energy use intensity, carbon footprint, percentile rating (where available), and potential eligibility for ENERGY STAR recognition. The City of Seattle does not publicly post this data, as done in New York. However, the City notes that all information received by the City, under Washington State’s Public Records Act, is a public record and hence can be viewed by anyone upon request (Seattle DPD 2011). As such, Seattle’s multifamily energy ratings are not actively disclosed to the public, but they cannot be considered strictly confidential. The final component of Seattle’s program is disclosure. Specifically, a building owner must provide an energy disclosure report when requested by any of the following:
A current tenant;
A prospective tenant, during lease negotiation,
A prospective buyer, during purchase and sale negotiation; or
A lender, when considering an application for financing or refinancing (City of Seattle 2011).
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