Northgate Plaza Apartments

How does Northgate Plaza Apartments 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. Northgate Plaza Apartments's ENERGY STAR score of 93 compares with an average of 82 across the 9,612 that report a score; it scores higher than 53% of them and lower than 45%. Its site EUI of 62.2 kBtu/ft² is about 81% above the average of 34.4 kBtu/ft² — it uses more energy per square foot than the typical building in that group. Its emissions intensity of 3.5 kgCO₂e/ft² is about 65% above the group average of 2.1 kgCO₂e/ft².

At 97,290 sq ft, it is about 36% below the average floor area of 150,919 sq ft for those buildings. It was built in 1971, 17 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 93 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: a score of 93 means the building performs better than about 93% of its national peers. BuildingCensus bands the score into report-card grades; 93 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. Northgate Plaza Apartments's 62.2 kBtu/ft² across 97,290 sq ft works out to about 6.1 billion Btu (1,774 MWh-equivalent) in 2019. The disclosure also reports 318,294 kWh of electricity and 49,127 therms of natural gas for the year.

Which law requires Northgate Plaza Apartments to report its energy use?

Northgate Plaza Apartments 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 2019 disclosure (source record california:6842801:2019). 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.