The short answer: The Gross Floor Area (GFA) used to compute your Energy Use Intensity (EUI) is the square footage of your commercial buildings only, excluding any parking garages.
We exclude parking in this calculation because parking garages typically use much less energy than commercial buildings, and including their floor area may give you an artificially low EUI. Computing EUI without parking will provide you with a more realistic target and better comparisons to your peers.
The longer answer: Portfolio Manager tracks three different Parking metrics:
- Gross Floor Area (Buildings and Parking)
- Gross Floor Area (Buildings) *used to compute EUI
- Gross Floor Area (Parking)
If your parking garage is separately metered, we recommend that you exclude your parking energy and parking GFA from Portfolio Manager to get the most accurate ENERGY STAR Score.
If your parking garage is NOT separately metered, include your parking energy and parking GFA (as a separate Property Use). Here's how it will be handled:
- Score: Your parking energy will be estimated and subtracted to isolate and assess the performance of the building.
- All other Metrics: Your parking energy will be included (it should be relatively small and therefore have little effect on metrics), but your parking GFA will not be included (because a large parking GFA could skew your metrics).