Evaluation of building energy performance rating

Building energy performance rating protocols provide a way to compare the energy consumption of one building with those of other similar buildings. A search found 47 protocols for commercial buildings, five of which were chosen for in depth evaluation in this paper The most common methodology used by the protocols chosen was to compare the building to a database of surveyed buildings. The comparison could be as simple as a graphical comparison of energy intensity, or it could be a complex procedure to compute an index. To compare the selected protocols, data on 29 buildings were gathered using a short survey. While some exceptionally good buildings are consistently rated well across different rating methods, most buildings could be considered "good" by some rating methods but not others.