The Birchwood Apartments

How does The Birchwood Apartments compare with other multifamily housing buildings in Montgomery County?

The latest disclosures cover 553 multifamily housing buildings in Montgomery County, out of 1,766 buildings citywide. The Birchwood Apartments's ENERGY STAR score of 63 compares with an average of 80 across the 514 that report a score; it scores higher than 16% of them and lower than 82%. Its site EUI of 60.8 kBtu/ft² is about 41% above the average of 43.2 kBtu/ft² — it uses more energy per square foot than the typical building in that group.

At 40,543 sq ft, it is about 80% below the average floor area of 198,668 sq ft for those buildings. It was built in 1960, 29 years earlier than the group's average year built (1989). 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 63 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 63 means the building performs better than about 63% of its national peers. BuildingCensus bands the score into report-card grades; 63 falls in band C — below median (55–69). It sits 12 points below 75, the threshold for ENERGY STAR certification. In Montgomery County, 53% 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. The Birchwood Apartments's 60.8 kBtu/ft² across 40,543 sq ft works out to about 2.5 billion Btu (722 MWh-equivalent) in 2024. Its source EUI of 92.1 kBtu/ft² also counts the energy lost generating and delivering that power, which is why it is higher. The disclosure also reports 191,663 kWh of electricity and 18,104 therms of natural gas for the year.

Which law requires The Birchwood Apartments to report its energy use?

The Birchwood Apartments reports under the Benchmarking Law (Bill 2-14) / BEPS (Bill 16-21), the legal basis of Montgomery County's Commercial Building Energy Benchmarking program, which publishes each covered building's annual benchmarking results. The record shown here is the report-year 2024 disclosure (source record montgomery_county:34620601:2024). Montgomery County's BEPS (Bill 16-21; regulations approved in 2025) sets declining site-EUI standards for buildings of 25,000+ sq ft, with interim and then final standards later this decade and into the 2030s depending on building type.