Washington, D.C. topped the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Most Energy Star Certified Buildings for the second row in a year, the federal agency announced Wednesday.
The District of Columbia easily outranked other cities with its 686 commercial buildings that met the EPA’s energy efficiency standards. Runner-up Los Angeles had 527 buildings and third-place San Francisco reported 355 Energy Star-level facilities.
“Every year, more cities and buildings are turning to energy efficiency to protect the environment and strengthen their local economies,” Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator said in a statement. “Money saved on energy bills can boost the bottom line and be reinvested. The cities on this list prove energy efficiency saves money, improves our communities today, and helps us build toward a healthy future full of opportunity.”
To be Energy Star certified, office buildings, schools, retail stores, hotels and other facilities must be engineered to perform better than 75 percent of similar structures nationwide.
The report, in its eighth year, lists the 25 top metropolitan regions throughout the country and praises top-performing cities for incentivizing builders who have created sustainable models that subsequently consume 35 percent less energy.
The full list of cities and number of Energy Star buildings is below:
1 Washington, DC 686
2 Los Angeles 527
3 San Francisco 355
4 Atlanta 311
5 New York City 303
6 Chicago 281
7 Dallas-Fort Worth 249
8 Houston 231
9 Denver 215
10 Phoenix 190
11 Boston 157
12 Philadelphia 156
13 Minneapolis-St. Paul 131
14 Seattle 122
15 San Diego 120
16 Riverside 118
17 San Jose 114
18 Miami 104
19 Sacramento 103
20 Portland, Ore. 74
21 Charlotte, NC 71
22 Honolulu, Hawaii 69
23 Virginia Beach 63
24 Indianapolis 57
25 Austin 55
25 Louisville 55
