The Environmental Protection Agency and ENERGY STAR are sponsoring a nationwide building competition to see how efficient a building can become over the course of one year in its use of power and its creation of waste. The 14 buildings in the contest will be measured for their EUI, energy use intensity, which describes in an easy to understand number how much energy a building consumes relative to the size of that building.
How is EUI measured and calculated?
The EUI is arrived at by finding the total energy consumed in one year, which is measured in kBtu’s, and dividing that figure by the building’s total floor space. As an example, if a school with 50,000 square feet of floor space used 7, 500,000 kBtu of energy, then its EUI is calculated to be 150. Usually the lower the EUI is the more energy efficient the building.
