WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Energy Star program announced that it will release a complete upgrade of Portfolio Manager, its benchmarking tool for commercial buildings, on July 17, 2013. Portfolio Manager is a free online tool that enables users to measure, track, assess, and report on the energy and water performance of their buildings, benchmarking them against national averages.

Portfolio Manager is currently in use by more than 70,000 individual accounts to measure the performance of more than 300,000 commercial buildings. This major update will provide a new interface, streamlined functionality, and improved usability, said EPA.

EPA said the database architecture, system processing, web services (formerly known as automated benchmarking services), and user interface will all be upgraded. The agency said the new interface will provide for simpler, more streamlined functionality; easier-to-generate, graphical reports; and improved sharing features.