The case for hospital energy benchmarking is strong, but the tools are weak. Hospital owners and operators do not know if their hospitals are good or bad relative to peers or to past performance. Existing energy use models are not trusted, as many inputs are based on estimated values, not on real data. Aggregate, non system level data, is to general to inform system level comparisons. Further, opportunities for improvement (beyond highly "visible" systems such as the lighting or motors) are not well understood. While the high energy cost in hospitals is widely recognized, accurate characterization based on measured data of end uses is not available.

In a presentation at Building Science Summer Camp(1) 2008, building efficiency expert, Henry Gifford, demonstrated the danger of blindly trusting benchmark data. By looking at the CBECS source data that the USGBC used to set the non-LEED building baseline, his research challenged the USGBC statement that LEED certified building perform 25% better than non-LEED certified buildings. Gifford demonstrated that USGBC developed their non-LEED performance statitic by averaging all the buildings in the CBECS database, old and new. While the LEED certified performance statistic was the median performance of, well, new LEED buildings. It just doesn't seem fair to say that LEED buildings are performing better than non-LEED buildings, when the non-LEED buildings are up to 30 times as old! This is not to say that LEED has not provided value to the built environment, but rather, that blindly trusting benchmark data could lead owners to make the wrong decisions in their capital improvements.

The importance of accurate, transparent, measured data is reaching a new level for hospitals. The following 4 issues are at the core of why hospital owners and operators must pay increased attention to energy benchmarking.
1) With incentives and rebates on the horizon (or for some states, in their front yard); facilities must be able to accurately evaluate their energy reduction options. The alternative to accurate evaluation is limited capital dollars spent on ineffective solutions.
2) Accurate energy monitoring and benchmarking is key to accurate evaluation. You can't manage what you can't measure. The differences between system design and operational implementation are frequently the deltas that can be best leveraged for inexpensive and impactful energy reductions.
3) Most hospitals do not have the means to measure or monitor their energy consumption beyond gas and electric bills.
4) With healthcare dollars being stretched to cover an aging population as well as aging infrastructure, hospitals can't afford to make the wrong choice in their capital improvements. First, to identify the real opportunities for improvement hospitals must have a low cost way to monitor energy consumption at the system level. Second, renovations parading as cost effective energy reduction measures that don't live up to their promises must be uncovered and not repeated. The best way to uncover these masked intruders is via active system level monitoring.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNLs) is developing a method that both existing and new buildings can employ to monitor energy consumption at the system level. The method is simple, in-expensive, and commonplace, however the micro and macro effects of this method address all 4 of the issues listed above. After learning about LBNL's research in hospital energy benchmarking and its proposed method for bringing system level benchmarking to every hospital, attendees will be armed with the most recent information on hospital energy benchmarking and tools to benchmark their own facility.


1. Building Science Summer Camp is an annual, invitation only, gathering of the top 200 building engineers, scientists, and architects in the US. The event is hosted by Joe Lstiburek.