Building Performance Standards

Building Performance Standards (BPS) are increasingly shaping how building owners plan for carbon reduction. These regulations set specific performance targets, often for energy use or carbon emissions, that buildings must meet by a given compliance year. The challenge for owners is not only understanding what those targets mean for their properties but also identifying the gap between current performance and compliance thresholds.

The Building Performance Standards feature in Carbon Signal enables users to model, track, and plan for regulatory compliance directly within their portfolios. It connects regulatory requirements to your building’s modeled performance, helping you visualize when each building is projected to comply or fall short of the standard.

Setting Up a Building Performance Standard

Open Performance standards

Click Performance standards in the left sidebar. This is a top-level page, not part of Team Settings.

Open the Active standards tab

The page opens on Analysis. Click Active standards to see the standards already defined for your team.

Create a new standard

Click New standard, then choose From library to pull in a published standard, or Custom standard to define your own. A custom standard starts as a container: give it a name and a description, and it is created empty.

Add a pathway to the standard

A standard holds one or more pathways, each with its own compliance periods, targets, and penalties. This is what lets a single regulation carry, for example, separate pathways for different compliance routes. On the standard’s card, click New pathway. You’ll be guided through five setup steps:

Step 1: General

Provide the basic details for your standard.

Name: Enter a unique name for the standard.

Coverage Rules: Define which buildings the standard applies to.

Select applicable building types.
Apply other criteria such as location (State or City) or floor area thresholds to filter eligible buildings.

Step 2: Compliance Periods

Define one or more compliance periods.

Click + Add Date Range.

Select a Start Year and End Year to define a compliance period.

To add additional compliance periods with different requirements, click + Add Date Range again and repeat.

Step 3: Targets

Set the target performance levels for each combination of building type and compliance period. The type of standard is chosen here, not on the General step.

Choose the Scope: Emissions, Site energy, or Source energy.

Choose the Target type: Prescriptive target for an absolute threshold, or Percent improvement for a reduction measured against the baseline. Scope and Target type together determine what the standard measures, giving six possible combinations.

Enter the target for each row. If you already have this data in a spreadsheet, you can copy and paste directly into the table.

If the standard is scoped to emissions, you must also specify the Emission factors to be used for each utility. If it is scoped to source energy, specify the Source energy factors instead.

Step 4: Annual Penalties

Specify how penalties are calculated for non-compliant buildings.

Choose a Penalty Type:

Exceedance Penalty – applied per unit of energy or carbon that exceeds the target.
Fixed Penalty – a set amount applied to each building that exceeds the target, either per building or per unit of floor area.

Step 5: Notes

Add any additional context or references related to this standard. For example, document alternative compliance paths or special exemptions.

When finished, click Next.

Your Building Performance Standard is now defined and has been applied to applicable buildings in your portfolio.

Viewing Building Compliance

From the Building Details page, you can view an analysis of Building Performance Standards applicable to the building.

In the dropdown, above the Decarbonization over Time chart, select the BPS you would like to view.

This will display the BPS performance requirements alongside the building’s baseline performance and projected performance after applying interventions. The chart helps visualize the timing and impact of interventions needed to maintain compliance with the BPS requirements.

There is also a summary card available for each BPS applicable to the building. Two charts are displayed:

The first illustrates how much the building’s energy use or carbon emissions are below or above the required performance targets across each compliance period.

The second shows the annual and cumulative penalties associated with non-compliance.

Both charts can be viewed for the Baseline condition and after interventions are applied, allowing you to compare the impact of improvement measures on compliance and potential penalties.

Viewing Portfolio Compliance

In Portfolio Overview, the Performance Standards widget provides a high-level view of how your buildings perform against selected Building Performance Standards.

In the dropdown menu, select the performance standard you want to view. The widget will update automatically based on the standard you select.

The widget shows the percentage of buildings in the portfolio that are compliant or at risk of the selected standard. The widget can be viewed for the Baseline condition and after interventions are applied, allowing you to compare the impact of improvement measures on compliance.