With its Climate Action Plan set, St. Louis Park is looking for steps to help meet their goals. Recently, it has turned to the Efficient Buildings Collaborative, which according to Energy Manager Leah Hiniker, utilizes benchmarking to keep track of the energy consumption of large buildings.

“Benchmarking programs are a method for trying to have larger buildings and multi-family building owners to obtain and record and then report their energy used to each individual city,” Hiniker said.

According to Hiniker, building owners are often unaware of how much energy they’re using, and this program can help them realize their consumption and take steps toward energy reduction.

“A lot of building owners don’t know how much energy their buildings are using,” Hiniker said. “They don’t know how well their building is operating from an efficiency standpoint compared to other cities or other buildings in the city or of the same building type.”

Roots and Shoots club member junior Marit Gabel said people should be aware of their energy usage because it can lead people to be more environmentally conscious.

“It’s a good idea for us to know how much energy we’re using and to be conscious of that is a good first step, being able to limit our energy usage and be more environmentally friendly,” Gabel said.

According to Hiniker, the Efficient Buildings Collaborative attempts to locate larger consumers of energy and approach them with solutions.

“These programs try and tackle the big energy users that contribute greenhouse gases and really striving to reduce anything we can do to protect the environment,” Hiniker said.