While writing the influential 2005 report, The Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing, it became apparent to New Ecology staff that no one really knew how multifamily housing was performing. We recognized that the prospects for producing high performance multifamily housing would ultimately depend on using data to show how high performance buildings used energy and to reveal how much existing buildings could be improved.

Despite being a small non-profit we boldly set out to develop the first large scale database of performance in this sector. New Ecology led the effort which resulted in the creation of WegoWise, which was incubated as part of New Ecology until it was spun off in 2011.

Evidence of the impact of our efforts is widespread: in city and state-wide benchmarking programs, owners tracking the performance of their portfolios, federal housing policy and innovative, energy-related financing programs. The focus on using data to demonstrate that sustainable development is better than conventional methods is part of New Ecology’s DNA.

Graphs from WegoWise Demo