When asked about what items in your life use energy, you might think of objects in your home, such as bedroom lights, ceiling fans, refrigerators, and ovens. You might not immediately think of all that energy from the other places you visit on a regular basis. In fact, commercial buildings that people frequent every day—grocery stores, restaurants, offices, warehouses, and retail shops, just to name a few—all use a significant amount of energy to run their daily operations.
To evaluate energy use, the Energy Department calculates source energy, which represents the total amount of energy required to run the building, including energy generation and transmission. It's generally considered the most equitable way to compare the energy efficiency of buildings to each other.
Of the more than 6 million commercial buildings in the U.S., the Energy Department collects data on 130,000 sites and has found they use an average energy use of 207,000 British thermal units per square foot per year. Compare that to residential locations and our homes don't even come close to energy use: Among 723,000 residential buildings with reported data, the average energy use is 67,000 BTUs per square foot per year.
The efficiency of a commercial building, measured in energy used per square foot of space, will vary based on many factors. Like residential buildings, the type of windows, insulation, HVAC systems, and more can change how much energy is needed to keep a building running. Commercial building operators also have to consider the type of mechanical or industrial equipment in use, the number of hours that the building is occupied, and whether the building houses materials that must be kept under specific environmental conditions. All of these aspects and more can change the energy necessary to allow the building to perform its function.
To learn more about your state's commercial energy use, LED Lighting Supply compiled a list of the states that use the most commercial energy per building using data from the Building Performance Database from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. States are ranked by average source energy use intensity and ties are broken by the total number of commercial-use buildings in the database.
