The Seattle 2030 District is proving just how powerful benchmarking can be for setting and achieving ambitious energy-saving goals.Our high-performance building district, made up of more than 90 downtown property owners, managers, engineers, architects and others, is already well on its way to meeting its goal of reducing energy use in member buildings 50% below the national median by 2030.Benchmarking and the sharing of building energy use information among members has helped the District measure progress toward energy-saving goals, compare results, share best practices and make buildings perform at higher levels of efficiency.Seattle 2030 District encompasses approximately one-half of Seattle's downtown building square footage and includes office buildings, retail space, food service establishments as well as public and residential buildings like the Seattle Central Library, Horizon House retirement community and Bellwether’s Mercer Court apartments. Many of these buildings are saving tens of thousands of dollars each year in energy-savings costs.The 2030 Challenge is designed to focus the building sector on energy reduction targets for new construction and major renovations as well as existing buildings. It sets incremental targets that establish a practical path to carbon-neutral new construction and major renovations by 2030.As the Commercial Program Manager, I work to engage private sector property and business owners and managers in addressing energy reduction at the scale of districts and cities, expanding on the building-by-building strategy. The 2030 Challenge adds reduction targets for water consumption and CO2 emissions from transportation and provides stakeholders with the metrics to guide their actions. The goal is to make Seattle a much more sustainable, efficient and environmentally sound community by 2030.