By Matt Pearce, Campaign Specialist, U.S. Green Building Council

In January, USGBC launched its second advocacy campaign of 2012, Mainstream Benchmarking to advocate for policies that will bring the benefits of energy benchmarking to all commercial buildings.

Why benchmarking? Why now?  The answer is simple. The green building movement has made many technologies and processes standard practice by building new LEED buildings and by retrofitting existing buildings; however, many spaces are not considered energy efficient.