Northwood High School

How does Northwood High School compare with other K-12 school buildings in California?

The latest disclosures cover 2,128 K-12 school buildings in California, out of 40,029 buildings citywide. Northwood High School's ENERGY STAR score of 94 compares with an average of 74 across the 2,016 that report a score; it scores higher than 75% of them and lower than 22%. Its site EUI of 33.2 kBtu/ft² is roughly in line with the average of 34.6 kBtu/ft² — it uses less energy per square foot than the typical building in that group. Its emissions intensity of 1.1 kgCO₂e/ft² is about half of the group average of 2.0 kgCO₂e/ft².

At 226,139 sq ft, it is about 75% above the average floor area of 129,123 sq ft for those buildings. It was built in 1999, 23 years later than the group's average year built (1976). Across all 24 jurisdictions BuildingCensus covers, the 6,548 K-12 school buildings average an ENERGY STAR score of 64 and a site EUI of 52.7 kBtu/ft².

What does an ENERGY STAR score of 94 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 94 means the building performs better than about 94% of its national peers. BuildingCensus bands the score into report-card grades; 94 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. Northwood High School's 33.2 kBtu/ft² across 226,139 sq ft works out to about 7.5 billion Btu (2,200 MWh-equivalent) in 2023. The disclosure also reports 639,082 kWh of electricity and 18,142 therms of natural gas for the year.

Which law requires Northwood High School to report its energy use?

Northwood High School 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:13287618:2023). 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.