WegoWise Launches Commercial Building Utility Tracking Platform

BOSTON, April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- WegoWise, a leading building performance analytics provider, today announced the launch of its commercial platform, providing a simple and inexpensive solution to track and benchmark utility data across all types of commercial buildings. Building off WegoWise's industry leadership in utility tracking for multifamily buildings, the expanded solution quickly identifies the least efficient buildings in broad commercial building portfolios for targeted energy upgrades which maximize ROI. WegoWise's commercial platform also offers seamless integration with Energy Star Portfolio Manager, helping customers comply with an increasing number of energy regulations across the country.

Liberty Property Trust, a $7 billion real estate investment trust, is one of the first commercial property owners to deploy WegoWise's commercial platform. WegoWise is now tracking utility usage over more than 2.9 million square feet of Liberty's commercial properties and will continue to be deployed throughout their 81 million-square-foot portfolio.

"Our goal is to improve the efficiency of the built environment across all markets," said Barun Singh, a founder of WegoWise. "WegoWise has built the world's largest database of utility use in multifamily buildings, and developed tools for building owners to get real value from that data. Now we're extending those insights and best practices to commercial buildings. New energy disclosure laws are being enacted regularly, and there is increasing pressure to solve the split incentive issue for energy retrofits. Leading commercial property owners like Liberty Property Trust are already using our platform to reduce energy costs and simplify compliance."

The split incentive issue arises when property owners do not make efficiency investments because renters pay the utility bills, whereas renters do not make investments in property they don't own. By tracking tenant utility data in WegoWise, owners can demonstrate how different efficiency upgrades reduce costs and develop leases that split costs fairly, expediting energy retrofit projects.

"Understanding how buildings perform is essential to improving both energy efficiency and overall asset management," said Marla Thalheimer, director of sustainability for Liberty Property Trust. "By better understanding the level of efficiency of our assets and ranking them accordingly, we are able to prioritize resources and capital investments throughout the portfolio and also provide actionable information to our tenants to help them save operating costs. WegoWise's inexpensive and scalable approach provides a platform to simplify the entire benchmarking process by taking the monthly usage data from many different utilities across the country and depositing it into one user-friendly dashboard that can then be transferred to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager at the click of a button."

The new commercial platform comes on the heels of WegoWise's recent acquisition of Melon Power, an award-winning benchmarking service for commercial buildings. WegoWise's technology automatically retrieves utility bill data via a simple interface much like Mint.com, seamlessly aggregating energy data and savings without extensive office work or cumbersome spreadsheets. The platform then normalizes building characteristics and weather and compares those buildings by energy intensity. Visually compelling charts and graphs help users—from CFOs to property managers to building engineers—immediately understand utility usage, target retrofits and verify cost savings.

Liberty Property Trust is a leader in sustainability and high performance buildings in the commercial real estate market. As a 2012 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year, the company recently announced that it has achieved over 100 ENERGY STAR labeled buildings, 50 LEED buildings completed or under construction and reduced energy consumption in their managed portfolio by 20 percent—representing an estimated savings of over $5 million over their 2008 baseline.

About WegoWise
WegoWise provides an industry-leading web-based utility analytics platform for the building-performance industry. Bridging big data and energy efficiency, WegoWise distills large aggregations of energy and water data into useful, actionable information for building owners, managers, energy auditors and building efficiency programs, enabling them to automatically track, understand and benchmark building performance, and make better efficiency investment decisions. WegoWise's platform regularly identifies impressive opportunities for cost savings, as inefficient buildings typically pay four times the utility costs of efficient buildings. Learn more at wegowise.com.

About Liberty Property Trust
Liberty Property Trust is a leader in commercial real estate, serving customers in the United States and United Kingdom through the development, acquisition, ownership and management of superior office and industrial properties. Liberty's 81 million square foot portfolio includes 680 properties which provide office, distribution and light manufacturing facilities to 1,800 tenants. 

SOURCE WegoWise