It won’t be long before potential new residents will be able to see the energy costs of your property on a unit-by-unit basis on the web. This could become another marketing angle by green communities to sell themselves to new and renewing tenants.

Mike Radice is President and CEO of NWP Services Corp., a multifamily utility management services company. His firm is working with a prototype software package currently using the name Viastar. “We are developing an analytical database to benchmark energy performance in apartment communities to the degree that owners can boldly proclaim that they are tracking, managing, and communicating energy costs to the consumer,” Radice says of the Viastar program. He believes that the multifamily industry is moving toward greater energy conservation at the same time residents are becoming more desirous of information about energy and carbon footprints. A certification program with full transparency might become part of a community’s marketing edge.

In a related note, HUD is considering a program that “analyzes transportation, energy, and costs of living metrics for specific for-sale and for-rent housing units and displays that cost to consumers via a sticker visible somewhere on the property.” Read more about this here.

More articles on energy conservation:

• Mark Bramfitt on Data Centers and Utilities (datacenterknowledge.com)
• “Cash For Caulkers” Energy Retrofit Program Needs to Work at the Local Level (news.firedoglake.com)
• Npower’s bulb giveaway attacked (news.bbc.co.uk)