Recording certifications on assets

The Certifications module captures all building labels, ratings, awards, and renewable energy contracts associated with your assets — energy performance certificates, operational certifications, design and construction awards, and the procurement instruments used in market-based emissions accounting.

This article covers how to view certifications at the portfolio level, how to add or edit certifications on a specific asset, and how each field on the Certifications form is used.

Certifications live in two places in the Data Collection Portal:

Portfolio level — overview across all assets:

Data Collection Portal → Portfolio → Certifications

This view opens on the Overview tab, which summarizes certification coverage across the portfolio and helps you decide where to act:

Use the Overview tab to spot uncovered assets, plan renewals before certificates lapse, and check portfolio-level coverage ahead of GRESB submission or investor reporting. The Energy Rating, Operational, and Design and/or Construction tabs continue to provide per-scheme detail.

Asset level — detailed editing:

Data Collection Portal → Asset → Certifications

This is where you add, edit, or remove individual certifications on a single asset.

The Certifications module is organized into four tabs, each covering a different type of building certification:

Note: The full list of supported certification types is aligned with GRESB's accepted scheme list. If a scheme you need isn't available, contact your Scaler account manager.

When a GRESB report is enabled for the asset, selecting a certification with special GRESB reporting rules (for example NABERS ratings or BREEAM In-Use) or one that GRESB does not recognize shows an inline, non-blocking warning explaining how it will be treated in the GRESB export. For the underlying rules, see Completing a GRESB submission using Scaler.

To add a new certification on an asset:

The certification appears in the table on the relevant tab and contributes to the asset's certification status at the portfolio level.

The fields on the Certifications form, grouped by purpose.

Score/index — The numerical score behind the rating, where the scheme provides one. Examples: an EU EPC kWh/m²/yr value, a BREEAM percentage score, an Energy Star score from 1–100. Optional for most certifications.

Note: For assets located in the United States or Canada, the Energy Star Score/index auto-populates from the latest ESPM 12-month period after you connect the asset to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. Date obtained is set to the start date of that 12-month period (a tooltip on the field explains this convention).

Covered area + Unit — The floor area covered by the certification. Leave blank to auto-link the certification to the asset's full GFA. Only enter a value when the certification covers a sub-area (e.g. a single floor or wing). The unit (m² or ft²) follows the asset's unit system.

Obtainment status — The current state of the certification:

Expiration date — The date the certification expires. Used in the portfolio-level Nearest Expiry column.

Comment — Free-text notes about the certification.

Evidence — The certificate file or supporting documentation. Upload as PDF or image.

Used only when reporting against EU Taxonomy or SFDR. Leave blank if not applicable.

Note: NZEB thresholds are country-specific. Source the relevant threshold from the national energy regulation authority before completing these fields.

Date evidence submitted for review — A legacy field from a one-off GRESB scoring change. No longer used. Leave blank.

The Renewable energy contracts tab tracks the renewable energy procurement instruments (PPAs, RECs, GOs, Energy Attribute Certificates) used in market-based scope 2 emissions accounting. This tab is only relevant if you are reporting to GRESB — these contracts do not feed the certification status indicators in the portfolio Certifications overview.

A Renewable Energy Contract record is a procurement instrument. It records how much renewable energy was purchased and under what attributes; it does not represent or change how much energy the asset consumed. Consumption is only ever driven by the volumes on your consumption meters. Entering these fields does not reduce, reclassify, or otherwise affect recorded consumption, and the two are not linked.

Recording a contract here is also separate from market-based scope 2 accounting. To reflect a market-based emission factor in your GHG figures, add the supplier's market-based factor in the Emission Factor Tool and select that supplier on the relevant meter(s). See Configuring market-based emission factors.

The Renewable Energy Contract record captures the GRESB-required attributes — Procurement type, Market-based claim, Proximity, and Vintage of generation — that populate the matching columns in the GRESB Asset Spreadsheet. All four fields must be populated for GRESB to award market-based claim and procurement quality points.

If a field is genuinely unknown, selecting Unknown clears the blocking alert in Scaler. This avoids the missing-data alert but may negatively impact your GRESB score, since valid procurement attributes are required to earn those points. Where possible, populate the actual values rather than relying on Unknown.

The form structure differs from the other three tabs:

For the full GRESB submission workflow, see Completing a GRESB submission using Scaler.

Certifications can be entered at both the asset level and the building unit level, but they behave differently.

For details on building unit setup, see Building units: Setting up & entering data.

Click the pencil icon on any row in the Certifications table to edit. To remove a certification, open the row and use the delete option in the edit drawer. Removed certifications no longer count toward the asset's certification status.

Type dropdown shows no options → Select a Group first. The available Type values are filtered by the Group you choose.

Pasted Level value fails validation → Always pick from the dropdown rather than typing or pasting. Even visually identical text can fail validation. Re-pick Group → Type → Level in that order.

Energy Star score not appearing for a US/Canada asset → Confirm the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager integration is active for that asset. See ENERGY STAR connection set-up. ESPM sync runs monthly, so a new score may take up to 30 days to appear after the integration goes live.

In-progress certification won't save → Set Obtainment status to Planning to obtain and leave Date obtained blank. Don't enter a registration or target date.

Certification missing from portfolio reports → Check whether it was entered at the building unit level. Building-unit certifications are excluded from portfolio analytics — move them to the asset level if they should appear in reports.

Alongside the portfolio-level and asset-level views in the Data Collection Portal, a company-level Certifications view aggregates the certifications from every portfolio into a single table.

Analytics Portal → Company → Certifications

This view lists certifications across all portfolios together, so you can review certification coverage company-wide without switching between portfolios. A Portfolio name column shows which portfolio each certification belongs to, and it is sortable and filterable alongside the asset name, so you can group or narrow the table by portfolio for cross-fund analysis.