Senior living energy usage breakdown: a portfolio guide for Canadian care facility operators

Executive summary

Senior living and care facilities are energy-intensive buildings with continuous operating needs, from resident comfort and safety to heating, cooling, kitchens, laundry, and care-related equipment.

That energy intensity also creates a meaningful savings opportunity. Retrocommissioning programs report potential energy bill savings of up to 15% per year, often with paybacks of less than two years, which makes it important for operators to know which facilities are worth investigating first.

For multi-site operators, the challenge is turning scattered utility, finance, and contract data into a portfolio view that enables comparison of facility performance and identifies energy-saving opportunities.

This senior living energy usage breakdown whitepaper outlines a practical way to compare energy usage across senior living portfolios. It shows how to:

• Understand where energy use and cost typically add up in care facilities
• Build a comparable baseline across facilities, meters, accounts, fuels, and contracts
• Compare facilities against similar peers and their own normalized history
• Identify which sites need review, and whether the issue is operational, commercial, billing-related, or reporting-related

The goal is to move from fragmented energy data to confident portfolio decisions across budgeting, operations, procurement, capital planning, and emissions reporting.

Key takeaways

• Senior living facilities consume substantial energy because they combine residential occupancy with continuous care, comfort, and safety requirements.
• Raw totals can mislead portfolio decisions because facility size, care model, resident capacity, climate, tariffs, and rate structures all affect cost and usage.
• Better benchmarking starts with a standardized baseline that connects cost, consumption, emissions, meters, accounts, building context, and care model.
• The highest-value facilities to investigate are usually found through normalized outliers, not the highest total bills.

Why energy visibility breaks down in senior care portfolios

Energy usage in senior living facilities is higher than in many common commercial building types. That creates a real savings opportunity, but only if operators can see which facilities are driving usage, cost, and emissions across the portfolio.

Senior care facilities have higher median energy use than many common building types

Senior care facilities: 1.2 GJ/m2
Offices: 1.1 GJ/m2
Retail: 0.9 GJ/m2
Schools: 0.9 GJ/m2

NRCan’s 2022 snapshot included 600 benchmarked senior care buildings covering 6.25 million m². Only 10 of those buildings were ENERGY STAR certified, which suggests there is still a significant opportunity for senior care organizations to capture energy savings.

Senior care facilities are difficult to compare

Comparing senior care facilities can be complex because care portfolios can include a mix of long-term care homes, assisted living residences, independent living buildings, memory care wings, mixed-use campuses, and older buildings that have been expanded over time.

Facility-level differences also matter. Some sites have full-service kitchens and laundry. Others outsource laundry, use different HVAC systems, have more licensed beds, or share a central plant across multiple buildings.

Because of those differences, the highest-cost facility is not always the least efficient facility. A fair comparison needs more context than total cost or total usage.

Energy data is scattered across teams and systems

Energy data is often spread across utility bills, supplier portals, meter data, finance systems, procurement files, building systems, capital planning spreadsheets, and emissions reports. Each team may organize it differently, which can make the data appear complete yet still be difficult to use for fair comparison.

Senior care operators need a clearer way to answer practical questions:

• Which facilities are actually driving cost, usage, and emissions?
• Which facilities are using more energy than similar homes?
• Did cost rise because usage increased, or because the unit cost changed?
• Which sites should be reviewed first without disrupting resident comfort?

5 signs energy data is leading senior care operators to the wrong conclusions

When energy data is not standardized across a senior care portfolio, teams may focus on the wrong sites or misread the cause of cost changes.

Here are five signs energy data may be leading teams to the wrong conclusions.

1. The highest-cost facility changes depending on the report

The same facility can look like a top problem in one report and normal in another. One report may rank facilities by total annual energy spend, another may rank by electricity cost only. A third may rank by combined electricity and gas usage, and a fourth may rank by emissions.

Unless the same calculation rules are applied, the ranking does not show which sites are truly driving cost, usage, or emissions.

2. Large campuses look worse than smaller homes

A 230-bed mixed-use campus will usually consume more total energy than a 90-bed care home. That does not mean it is performing worse.

Without facility context, teams may focus on the biggest buildings while missing smaller sites with higher energy intensity, higher cost per bed, or unusual year-over-year changes.

3. Finance and operations cannot reconcile the numbers

When energy data is organized differently by each team, the numbers may not line up across reports. Finance may track billed cost by invoice date, while operations tracks consumption by meter read or service period.

Each number can be accurate within its own system, but still difficult to reconcile.

4. Cost increases are treated as energy waste

A higher energy bill can be caused by higher usage. But it can also be caused by commodity prices, delivery charges, demand charges, taxes, carbon-related charges, rate class changes, contract timing, or billing adjustments.

Treating every cost increase as an operational problem can lead to unnecessary audits or retrofits. Cost and consumption need to be reviewed separately.

5. Emissions reporting requires manual fixes

Emissions reporting becomes difficult when fuel types, units, reporting periods, and provincial emissions factors are handled differently across the portfolio.

If teams are manually correcting spreadsheets each reporting cycle, the issue is usually the underlying data structure.

Why raw totals can mislead senior care portfolio decisions

Raw totals are figures such as total annual energy cost, total electricity use, total natural gas use, or total emissions. They are easy to report, but they can give operators the wrong first impression.

In senior care, raw totals are shaped by facility size, licensed beds, occupancy, care model, kitchens, laundry, HVAC systems, weather, rates, and contract terms. That means the highest-cost facility is not always the least efficient facility.

Raw totals are still useful. They show where the largest costs sit. But they should be treated as a starting point, not a final ranking of which facilities are underperforming.

Raw totals can point to the wrong facility

Quick example: A mixed-use senior campus spends $600,000 on energy each year, while a smaller long-term care home spends $440,000. On raw totals alone, the campus looks like the bigger issue. But if it is much larger and has more licensed beds, total spend is not enough to decide where to investigate first.

The smaller home may still have higher energy use per square metre, a higher cost per bed, or a steeper increase against its own baseline.

What a comparable senior care baseline requires

A comparable baseline is a standardized portfolio dataset that allows facilities to be measured consistently across sites and over time.

For senior care portfolios, the baseline should include 12 to 24 months of data across every facility, account, meter, and fuel type. The goal is to connect utility data with facility context so operators can compare sites fairly and explain what drives costs, usage, and emissions.

A useful baseline should include:

1. Facility details: address, province, floor area, care model, licensed beds, occupancy, kitchen and laundry status, and major HVAC or heating system type
2. Account and meter details: account numbers, meter IDs, utility or retailer, energy type, billing period, service period, and facility association
3. Standardized units and periods: usage converted into common units and reporting periods, while preserving original bill values for auditability
4. Core performance metrics: site EUI, source EUI, cost per square metre, cost per bed, usage per bed, emissions per bed, and year-over-year variance
5. Cost breakdowns: commodity, delivery, demand, fixed, tax, regulatory, carbon-related charges, adjustments, and credits
6. Emissions assumptions: consistent fuel and province-specific emissions factors, especially for multi-provincial portfolios

A clean baseline gives teams a common starting point before they rank sites, investigate outliers, or make decisions about procurement, operations, capital planning, or emissions reporting.

Senior care energy visibility needs both electricity and gas

In NRCan’s benchmarked senior living data, natural gas accounts for 55% of total energy use, while electricity accounts for 41%. Smaller sources make up the rest.

For senior care operators, this means energy visibility needs to include both major fuel types. Looking at only one side can miss energy use, cost exposure, and emissions overall.

Example: A standardized senior care baseline

The table below is illustrative and uses the same facilities from the raw totals example. The purpose is to show how raw portfolio data becomes easier to compare when it is consistently structured.

What the baseline should enable

Once built, the baseline should help teams answer practical questions:

• Which facilities have the highest cost, usage, or emissions intensity?
• Which facilities are changing most compared with their own history?
• Which cost increases are tied to usage, and which are tied to pricing, tariffs, or contracts?
• Which sites should be investigated first?

Compare like with like: what drives performance in care facilities

Once a comparable baseline is in place, facilities can be assessed more fairly. The examples below show two ways to compare performance: against similar facilities, and against a facility’s own normalized historical baseline.

Example 1: Compare similar facilities

Consider three facilities from the baseline:

Prairie has the highest total spend, but it should not be compared directly with Lakeside and Riverbend. It is larger, located in a different province, and operates as a mixed-use campus.

Lakeside and Riverbend are a fairer comparison. They are both Ontario long-term care homes with similar operating requirements. In terms of total spend, Lakeside looks like the larger issue. But when energy use is compared per square metre, Riverbend has the higher EUI and becomes the stronger candidate for investigation.

Example 2: Compare against normalized historical performance

A facility can also look stable year over year while still using more energy than expected.

Consider Lakeside Long-Term Care over two years:

At first glance, the increase looks small: 200 GJ, or about 1.1% year over year.

But after normalizing for milder weather and similar occupancy, the facility’s expected energy use should have fallen to 17,200 GJ. Instead, it came in at 18,200 GJ. That means the facility used 1,000 GJ more than expected.

The raw year-over-year change looks minor. Compared with its own normalized baseline, the facility is moving in the wrong direction and should be reviewed.

Separate operational issues from pricing, billing, and contract issues

Before launching an audit or retrofit, operators should separate cost from consumption. A facility with flat usage and rising cost may not have an equipment problem. Instead, the increase may come from a tariff change, contract renewal, delivery charge, carbon charge, or billing issue.

A facility with rising usage and stable cost may still have an operational problem. The total bill may appear unchanged because lower rates or other cost factors mask the increase in energy use.

Example: A higher bill with flat usage

A long-term care home in Ontario shows the following year-over-year change:

The bill rose by $65,000, or about 14%, while usage stayed essentially flat.

This is likely not an equipment problem. It is more likely a unit-cost, rate, contract, tariff, tax, or billing issue. Procurement and finance should review the account before operations schedules a retrofit study.

Questions to ask at the site level

• Did the facility use more energy?
• Did the cost of energy change?
• Did peak demand change?
• Did the rate class or tariff change?
• Did the contract renew or expire?
• Did carbon-related charges change?
• Did emissions change because usage changed, the grid changed, or both?

Possible reasons a facility’s cost increased

Focus on the sites with the biggest opportunities

After cost, usage, billing, and contract drivers are separated, operators can build a more useful investigation shortlist. The goal is to focus attention where the data shows the greatest potential issues or opportunities.

A practical starting point is to flag the worst-performing 10% to 25% of facilities by normalized cost, usage, or emissions intensity. This list should be treated as a starting point for investigation.

Site performance patterns that warrant investigation

Once flagged, each site can be routed to the right type of follow-up, whether that means reviewing the bill, validating meter data, checking contract terms, or investigating the building systems driving the issue.

Senior care prioritization should also account for resident comfort, infection control requirements, staffing disruptions, capital timing, and maintenance windows. The fastest savings are not always the best first action if the work creates operational risk.

Bring cost, consumption, and emissions into one decision-making view

Senior care energy decisions involve finance, operations, procurement, and sustainability. Each team may need a different view of the data, but they should all work from the same standardized dataset.

When cost, consumption, contracts, and emissions are reported separately, teams can reach different conclusions about the same facility. Jotson helps consolidate those inputs into a single portfolio view, so operators can compare sites, explain cost changes, track emissions, and identify potential savings.

How Jotson supports senior care energy visibility

A practical framework: from data to decision

A repeatable senior care portfolio process can be summarized as:

Collect → Structure → Normalize → Compare → Focus → Explain

1. Collect: Gather 12 to 24 months of data across all facilities, accounts, meters, and fuel types.
2. Structure: Organize the data with consistent facility metadata, care models, floor area, licensed beds, and occupancy.
3. Normalize: Account for facility size, weather, occupancy, bed count, cooling coverage, and provincial emissions factors.
4. Compare: Compare each facility against similar peers and against its own normalized baseline.
5. Focus: Flag the worst-performing 10% to 25% of facilities by normalized cost, usage, or emissions intensity.
6. Explain: Determine the cause before taking action. The issue may be operational, commercial, tariff-related, billing-related, maintenance-related, or emissions-related.

Turn fragmented data into confident portfolio decisions

Senior care operators already have the data needed to find savings. The problem is that too much of it is scattered across bills, spreadsheets, portals, contracts, and reports.

Turning that data into one clear portfolio view creates a practical opportunity: see which facilities need attention, understand why costs are changing, and focus action where it can reduce spend without compromising resident comfort.

A practical next step is to assess current visibility gaps, build a clean 12- to 24-month baseline, and investigate the first group of normalized outlier sites.