Meritage

How does Meritage compare with other multifamily housing buildings in California?

The latest disclosures cover 10,630 multifamily housing buildings in California, out of 40,029 buildings citywide. Meritage's ENERGY STAR score of 100 compares with an average of 82 across the 9,612 that report a score; it scores higher than 76% of them. Its site EUI of 4.7 kBtu/ft² is about 86% below the average of 34.4 kBtu/ft² — it uses less energy per square foot than the typical building in that group. Its emissions intensity of 0.3 kgCO₂e/ft² is about 86% below the group average of 2.1 kgCO₂e/ft².

At 92,064 sq ft, it is about 39% below the average floor area of 150,919 sq ft for those buildings. It was built in 1985, 3 years earlier than the group's average year built (1988). Across all 24 jurisdictions BuildingCensus covers, the 59,945 multifamily housing buildings average an ENERGY STAR score of 70 and a site EUI of 59.0 kBtu/ft².

What does an ENERGY STAR score of 100 mean?

ENERGY STAR scores run from 1 to 100 and are computed by the EPA's Portfolio Manager as a percentile against similar buildings nationwide, adjusted for climate, size and use: 100 is the top of the scale. BuildingCensus bands the score into report-card grades; 100 falls in band A — high performer (85–100). Scores of 75 or higher meet the threshold for ENERGY STAR certification; certification itself is a separate, verified application that the disclosure does not record. In California, 65% of scored buildings are at 75 or above.

Site energy-use intensity (EUI) is the energy a building uses on site in a year divided by its floor area, in thousand Btu per square foot — lower is more efficient. Meritage's 4.7 kBtu/ft² across 92,064 sq ft works out to about 0.4 billion Btu (127 MWh-equivalent) in 2023. The disclosure also reports 63,270 kWh of electricity and 2,164 therms of natural gas for the year.

Which law requires Meritage to report its energy use?

Meritage reports under AB 802 (Public Resources Code §25402.10), the legal basis of California's Building Energy Benchmarking Program (statewide), which publishes each covered building's annual benchmarking results. The record shown here is the report-year 2023 disclosure (source record california:16122807:2023). AB 802 requires every California commercial building over 50,000 sq ft to report energy use to the CEC annually; the CEC publicly discloses the results statewide.