Analyst, Energy & Sustainability

Reporting to the VP, Environmental and Climate Adaptation, the candidate will be a key contributor to the Company’s sustainability, energy and resilience programs. The primary goal of this position is to drive utility cost savings, reduce emissions, and support compliance reporting through data-driven insights and analytics. This role is central to the coordination and execution of Equity Residential’s energy and sustainability initiatives, with a strong focus on driving communication and program management of energy and utility variances across our Facilities and Property Management teams.

• Responsible for the annual energy benchmarking of EQR’s properties. This may either be completed in-house or might involve managing an outside party conducting these benchmarking exercises on our behalf.
• Ensure compliance with the various state and local energy disclosure requirements by managing Equity Residential’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager account. Support the execution of our strategic plan for managing the increasingly stringent requirements by conducting data quality assessments on a per asset basis. Manage all records associated with energy benchmarking submissions.
• Under the guidance of Manager, Energy & Sustainability Analytics, lead energy variance identification and resolution process in collaboration with utilities accounting, facilities team, property management, and operations staff (e.g., RUBS), Sustainability Group Investments and external parties (e.g., utilities, vendors). Frequent and clear communication and follow up with regional and onsite teams will be critical to the success of this program.
• Responsible for managing the solar PV operations and maintenance program, which includes overseeing O&M contracts and contractors, managing budgets and invoices, coordinating with property and Facilities teams, and monitoring solar PV performance and addressing issues in a timely manner to improve performance of the systems. Share performance results and information with stakeholders (onsite staff, Facilities Team, Investments Team, and Sustainability Team) in a clear, concise, and appropriate timeframe to boost engagement and overall performance of the solar PV systems.
• Support EQR sustainability initiatives and projects - responsible for measuring, verifying, monitoring, providing data for underwriting, and enhancing EQR’s sustainability initiatives and projects (e.g., solar PV, HVAC retrofits, lighting retrofits, cogen systems) under the guidance of the Manager, Energy & Sustainability Analytics.
• Help ingest, process, analyze and report on energy, water, trash and similar data from various software platforms and utilities. Respond to data requests from various stakeholders (e.g., Investment Officers, Construction, Facilities, Property Management).
• Support the Acquisitions and Development teams by helping to prepare utility budgets.
• Support the development and maintenance of automated dashboards and reports, including developing underlying data models, to disseminate data and insights timely to key stakeholders. Examples include BEPS compliance, water usage, information required for public disclosures/ESG report, and portfolio resilience risk assessments.
• Review utility bill rates as needed.
• Support identification and execution of energy-related rebate and incentive programs.
• Support energy efficiency and sustainability projects as needed.
• Support the Company’s participation in industry organizations (e.g., ASHRAE, ACEEE, AEE, NMHC, ULI).
• Represents the Company in a professional manner at all times. Consistently maintains a professional courteous attitude when dealing with residents, coworkers and the general public.
• Performs other duties as necessary.

Familiarity and knowledge of any of the following is preferred:

• Developing and using visualizations in Power
  
  BI (or similar such as Tableau, Looker or Google Data Studio)
• Energy accounting
• IoT and business automation/management systems
• Building, mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems
• Water…