资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

A number of policies and programs are aimed at reducing energy use in buildings—buildingenergy codes, disclosure laws, energy-use benchmarking, and mandated or subsidized energyaudits. In the United States, many of these initiatives are enacted at the state or local level. Atthe federal level, one of the main programs is Energy Star certification, which provides a label totop energy-performing buildings. In this paper, we evaluate changes in rents and utility expen-ditures following Energy Star certification using a national sample of over 4,400 office buildingscombined with Energy Star data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We findthat building rents increase by 3.7 percent following certification, but that utility expendituresremain unchanged. We provide novel evidence that buildings do not make upgrades or capitalinvestments to obtain a certification, suggesting that the Energy Star program primarily certifiesbuildings that are already energy-efficient.