City of Miami Selects Touchstone IQ to Support Energy & Water Benchmarking
September 20, 2022
Industry-leading software will streamline implementation of Building Efficiency 305, the City’s first energy benchmarking program for large commercial and multifamily buildings
The City of Miami has selected Touchstone IQ as the energy and water benchmarking solutions provider for the Building Efficiency 305 program (BE305), a key component of Miami Forever Carbon Neutral.
Miami Forever Carbon Neutral is the City’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan (GHG Plan) and a roadmap to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Today, commercial and residential buildings contribute approximately 55% of total emissions in the City of Miami, and tracking and reporting energy consumption through benchmarking programs is one of the first steps to understanding GHG reduction opportunities.
“Through our work with other cities and states around the country, we’ve seen first-hand how benchmarking allows for a data-based approach to analyzing energy trends and needs, where improvements can be made, and reducing costs,” said Jon Dierking, Touchstone IQ founder and CEO. “We are proud of Miami's commitment to greenhouse gas reduction and look forward to helping them meet their goals.”
The BE305 ordinance requires commercial and multifamily buildings 20,000 square feet and above to benchmark every year but only those 100,000 and above will be required to participate starting in 2023. Touchstone IQ will support the City with industry-leading software that streamlines the process of communicating with and educating building owners, tracking reporting and compliance data, and distributing custom reports that will help the community understand current energy consumption along with potential reduction and cost-savings opportunities.
“Touchstone IQ has broad experience with governmental agencies and is currently the only off-the-shelf software solution to provide the required services coupled with the necessary multilingual facing technical support services and data privacy required by the City,” said City Manager Art Noriega. “We are looking forward to working with Touchstone IQ to continue the path to meeting our goals outlined in the Miami Forever Carbon Neutral Plan.”
About Touchstone IQ
Touchstone IQ is a full-service software and services energy management provider. Trusted by more cities and states than any other energy and water benchmarking platform, Touchstone IQ has worked with 17 city and state governments with 20,000+ buildings tracked to date. The Touchstone IQ platform eases the pain points associated with implementing and managing benchmarking ordinances and building performance policies and allows clients to analyze and improve upon energy management goals supporting climate action reporting. For more information, visit www.touchstoneiq.com.
About Miami’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability & Building Department
The City of Miami is implementing an innovative and holistic approach to resilience by addressing climate adaptation, carbon mitigation, sustainability, and partnerships. In Miami, the impacts of climate change can be observed as extreme heat, floods, storms, and sea-level rise which all tie back to our economy. The Building Efficiency 305 (BE305) program is an integral part of the City's approach to reducing the community-wide carbon footprint and is a key initiative administered by the Building Department.
The City of Miami’s BE305 Program requires multi-family and commercial buildings over 20,000 square feet to benchmark and report their energy and water consumption. First proposed in Greater Miami and the Beaches’ climate resilience strategy Resilient305, the program comes from collaborations between the City of Miami’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability, Miami Dade County, and the City Energy Project. For more information, visit www.benchmark305.com/.