Ontario EWRB reporting: the July 1 deadline and what your annual benchmark report should show

For most Ontario building owners, EWRB is a once-a-year chore: log in to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, enter or import twelve months of utility data, submit, forget. The province receives the data, and the owner receives a confirmation. What the owner rarely receives is an answer to the question the program was designed to raise: how does this building compare, and what should we do about it?

This article covers the mechanics of the filing, then the part that matters more: turning the same data into an annual benchmark report that a board or an asset manager can act on.

Who reports and when

Ontario's Guide to energy and water reporting states that buildings of 50,000 square feet or larger may need to report their energy and water use annually, that certain building types are required to report (identified through MPAC property codes), and that the reporting deadline to the Ministry of Energy and Mines is July 1 of each year. The guide also describes exemptions for buildings that meet certain criteria. The reporting tool is ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, which Natural Resources Canada describes as a free, online, secure platform adapted with Canadian weather, postal codes, both official languages and the metric system.

Broader public sector organizations (municipalities, school boards, hospitals, universities and colleges) file under a separate regulation, O. Reg. 25/23, also by July 1, and must post a conservation and demand management plan every five years.

What the filing needs

• Property details: address, property type, gross floor area, year built, and use details Portfolio Manager asks for (units, occupancy).
• Twelve calendar months of electricity, natural gas, district energy and water consumption, per meter, for the previous calendar year.
• Meters that cover the whole building, including any accounts billed to tenants or a sub-metering provider if they are within the property boundary.
• A clean calendar. Portfolio Manager works in calendar months; bills rarely do. Read-to-read bills that straddle month ends have to be assigned consistently, which is what our reporting month rule does.

The two failure modes we see most are missing meters (a second gas account nobody remembered) and double counting (a bill PDF and a Green Button record for the same period both loaded). Both distort the intensity numbers the benchmark is built on, which is why validation comes before filing in the VE-MAP workflow.

From filing to benchmark report

Once the data is in Portfolio Manager, it can be pulled back out, either as the Ministry's response data or directly through the Portfolio Manager connection. VE-MAP builds the annual benchmark report from that data. Per calendar year it records:

• Gross floor area, electricity in kWh, natural gas in therms, water in kilogallons, and the ENERGY STAR site energy use intensity as filed.
• A property energy use intensity computed from the utility totals in equivalent kWh per square foot, with the Portfolio Manager site EUI shown alongside for reference and the difference explained.
• Electricity, gas and water intensities per square foot.
• Comparison of each intensity against a multi-residential (MURB) average published from the Energy@Work portfolio, year by year, expressed as a percentage above or below.
• The ENERGY STAR score where the property type is eligible for one.
• Up to seven years side by side, with four charts: EUI, electricity, gas and water, each against the peer average.

The point of the report is the sentence under each chart: this building's gas intensity is above the multi-residential average and rising, or its water intensity fell after the fixture retrofit. Those sentences become priorities in the action plan.

Reading the numbers

Energy use intensity

ENERGY STAR's definition is simple: EUI is total annual energy divided by gross floor area. Two conventions matter. Site energy is what the utility bills show; source energy adds transmission, delivery and production losses, and EPA relies on source EUI for the score. Our reports use site energy in equivalent kWh so that electricity and gas add up in one unit an operator recognizes.

The ENERGY STAR score

NRCan's ENERGY STAR scores page explains the 1 to 100 scale: a score of 50 means half of the peer group performs better and half worse; 75 or more indicates top performance. Canadian scores are built from Statistics Canada's Survey of Commercial and Institutional Energy Use. NRCan's benchmarking FAQ confirms a score for multifamily housing has been available since August 2021. Our Portfolio Manager guide goes deeper on what drives the score.

Peer average versus score

A score compresses everything into one number. A per-commodity comparison shows where the number comes from. A building can score reasonably while its water intensity is far above peers, and that is the building with a leak. The annual report shows both so the two views check each other.

A calendar for the year

1. January to March: close the previous calendar year. Chase missing bills, resolve duplicates, confirm floor areas.
2. April: reconcile utility totals against Portfolio Manager meter entries; push any months that are missing.
3. May: generate the annual benchmark report; review with the property team; set priorities.
4. June: submit to Ontario ahead of July 1 (and to Toronto ahead of July 2 where applicable).
5. July onward: monthly reviews track whether the priorities are moving the intensities.

FAQ

Can the benchmark report be produced without an audit?

Yes. It is built entirely from the filed consumption data and floor areas. An audit tells you why the numbers are what they are; see energy audit vs ongoing monitoring.

We filed but our score is blank. Why?

Not every property type is eligible for a Canadian score, and eligible properties need complete twelve month meter coverage and required use details. NRCan's FAQ notes that properties without a score can still benchmark on median energy use, emissions and weather-normalized trends.

Does VE-MAP file on our behalf?

The platform connects to your Portfolio Manager account to pull the data for the report and can push validated monthly consumption to your meters with a preview and confirmation step. The submission itself stays with the account owner. Ask on the contact page if you want the team to run the annual cycle with you.