According to the Environmental Protection Agency, energy use in commercial buildings accounts for 17% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of over $100 billion per year. With building efficiency often seen as the low-hanging fruit for energy savings and carbon reductions, EPA awards Energy Star ratings to the top 25 percent of buildings as compared to similar buildings nationwide to incentivize voluntary improvements and savings in energy efficiency.

Today, EPA released its list of the top 25 U.S. cities with the largest number of buildings with the Energy Star rating for 2009. In this year’s ranking, only the second such list EPA has put together, Los Angeles hangs on to the top spot with Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Denver and Chicago finishing out the top 5.

In 2009, according to EPA, nearly 3,900 commercial buildings earned the ENERGY STAR, representing annual savings of more than $900 million in utility bills and more than 4.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Thirteen types of buildings can earn the Energy Star rating, including schools, hospitals, office buildings, retail stores, and supermarkets.

Since the Energy Star building program began 1999, overall annual utility savings have climbed to more than $1.6 billion and greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions of more than 1 million homes a year have been prevented. The 2009 list as follows:

1 Los Angeles

2 Washington

3 San Francisco

4 Denver, CO

5 Chicago, IL

6 Houston, TX

7 Lakeland, FL

8 Dallas-Fort Worth, TX

9 Atlanta, GA

10 New York, NY

11 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

12 Portland, OR

13 Boston, MA

14 Seattle, WA

15 Detroit, MI

16 Sacramento, CA

17 San Diego, CA

18 Austin, TX

19 Miami, FL

20 Phoenix, AZ

21 Ogden, UT

22 Charlotte, NC

23 Indianapolis, IN

24 Des Moines, IA; Fort Collins, CO; Philadelphia, PA

25 Louisville, KY

Since EPA awarded the first ENERGY STAR to a building in 1999, nearly 9,000 buildings across America have earned the ENERGY STAR as of the end of 2009, representing more than a 40 percent increase over last year’s total.

Photo:jondoeforty1 via flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from ecopolitology.org