Data package outlines energy use and building characteristics

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) is a nationally representative source of statistical information on energy-related characteristics, consumption, and expenditures. The dataset covers the nation’s 5.6 million commercial buildings totaling 87 billion square feet of floor space. Building characteristics information from the 2012 survey has been released; consumption and expenditures data has also been released. The 2012 CBECS energy data have all been released on the CBECS web page.

Go here to view occupancy of nongovernment-owned and government-owned buildings. This table also shows number of government-owned buildings for 2012. The CBECS report shows an estimated 776,000 total number of government-owned buildings. Local governments own a total of 558,000 of those buildings.

The 2012 CBECS consumption and expenditures detailed tables are comprised of tables C1-C38, which cover overall electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and district heat consumption, and tables E1-E11, which disaggregate the same energy sources by end use (heating, cooling, lighting, etc.).

Government facility managers and others can use the CBECS data for benchmarking purposes, says Joelle Michaels, CBECS survey manager. “Data such as those found in Table C4 provide energy use per square foot by categories such as building activity. This provides information to compare overall energy use against average figures for similar buildings,” Michaels tells GPN.

There is also a row category that breaks out the data specifically for government-owned buildings, Michaels says. “But to look at government buildings by specific types, one would need to use the public use microdata files which are provided for users to slice the data to suit their own purposes,” Michaels tells GPN.

The next CBECS report will include data for calendar year 2017. The data collection for the next CBECS report won’t even begin until 2018, so publication of 2017 data is quite far off.

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