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As more people become invested in finding ways to reduce buildings’ environmental impacts, some experts say full transparency of energy and water performance is needed while others say there is value in letting building owners keep some details to themselves.

Seattle is at the forefront of a movement pushing for greater disclosure of energy-use data 鈥� a tactic based in the belief that the availability of information will encourage people to reduce their environmental impacts. In fact, Seattle is one of only five U.S. cities to pass an ordinance requiring nonresidential and multifamily building owners to benchmark and disclose energy-use data to the city.

In Portland, the jury is still out.

Sarah Heinicke, executive director of the Lloyd eco-district, is skeptical of public disclosure of water and energy usage. Owners of low-performing buildings may be more likely to participate in voluntary programs if they are not required to share their progress, she said, although eco-district projects still could go in many directions.

鈥淚t comes down to whether you think total public disclosure motivates people to do better or scares people into not wanting to deal with it at all,鈥� Heinicke said.

While some people within Portland’s green building community argue that full, public transparency would dissuade commercial building owners from participating in district-wide energy-efficiency projects, city officials are continuing to develop an energy-disclosure ordinance.

鈥淭he city is strongly interested in what they’re doing up in Seattle,鈥� said Alisa Kane, Portland’s green building and development manager. 鈥淲e’ve been considering a mandated ordinance for some time, but we’re trying to see if we can get leverage from building owners through programmatic means as opposed to a mandate.鈥�

New York City; Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; and San Francisco have implemented ordinances similar to Seattle’s. The idea appeals to some industry professionals in Portland.

鈥淚 hope Portland has something like Seattle’s (energy disclosure ordinance) in the near future,鈥� said Clark Brockman, sustainability director at . 鈥淓ven if it starts as voluntary and becomes compulsory over time, more transparency about a building’s energy use helps make good decisions.鈥�

Brockman and others contend that post-occupancy data will be extremely significant in the future. Even though architects generally earn the accolades 鈥� or the criticism 鈥� for a building’s energy performance, studies continue to reveal that tenant behavior plays a huge role in energy efficiency.

A recent report from the New Buildings Institute, for example, found that poor practices in building operations can increase energy use by up to 60 percent.

But as neighborhood-specific sustainability goals are being pursued in Portland through pilot eco-districts, some building community members are focusing on voluntary programs that would not require the disclosure of private energy-use data.

As Heinicke talks with building owners and managers throughout the Lloyd District and encourages them to participate in energy-efficiency programs, she said that it has been important to ensure that information will remain private.

She cited Portland’s building efficiency challenge, in which 85 office buildings in the metropolitan market are competing to reduce carbon footprints. But individual building data remains private, and participants are represented by code names like 鈥淪trawberry鈥� and 鈥淏ig Snagtooth鈥� on the competition’s status board.

鈥淚 don’t think anyone has an interest in the public monitoring their energy or water usage,鈥� Heinicke said. 鈥淲e want to make it as easy as possible to scale-up and scale-out energy-efficiency projects in the Lloyd eco-district, and I don’t know if we can do that if we create an environment where it seems like in order to have access to program dollars or technical assistance, you have to become completely transparent in terms of energy usage.鈥�

But in downtown Seattle, many large commercial buildings continue to take significant steps toward transparency. More than 70 buildings are participating in the city’s 鈥�,鈥� which requires property owners to track their performance and share their data in an online dashboard for the entire district.

Through that program, owners of approximately 25 percent of all the downtown floor space 鈥� more than 20 million square feet 鈥� have so far agreed to report their data in an attempt to reduce consumption of energy, carbon and water by 50 percent by 2030.

The online monitoring program, created by Oakland-based , displays the district’s aggregated progress toward the 2030 goals. Two of the participating buildings have gone even further.

Owners of the 55-story office building at 1201 Third Ave. 鈥� the second tallest skyscraper in downtown Seattle 鈥� and the 83-year-old Joseph Vance Building are actually paying Lucid for extra dashboard features that share their real-time, floor-by-floor electricity, water and heating data online.

鈥淓nergy is starting to impact property value and marketing value and the perception of property in this competitive real estate market,鈥� Lucid CEO and co-founder Michael Murray said. 鈥淲e think this is going to be a replicable model that other cities will pick up as well.鈥�

While Heinicke may not be pushing for full disclosure, she still hopes that Portland’s eco-districts will benefit from the headway being made in Seattle and other cities.

鈥淚t’s actually pretty difficult to get people to agree to share information even in a limited way,鈥� Heinicke said. 鈥淲e’re hoping they’ve cleared the path a little for us and we can go even further than that.鈥�