Energy data for municipalities and local governments
A municipality operates some of the most energy-intensive buildings in town, reports on all of them to council and the province, and pays the bills through a finance system that was never designed for utility data.
The problem
In Ontario, every municipality and municipal service board is a public agency under O. Reg. 25/23, which requires a summary of annual energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for each prescribed operation, submitted on or before July 1 of the following year, plus an energy conservation and demand management plan published every fifth year. Water and sewage facilities report volumetric flow alongside energy, and there is no minimum building size, so small pump stations count as much as city hall.
The buildings behind that report are not offices. The US EPA notes that drinking water and wastewater plants are typically the largest municipal energy consumers, often accounting for 30 to 40% of total energy consumed by municipalities, and that as much as 40 percent of a drinking water system's operating cost can be energy. Arenas, pools, depots and streetlights sit alongside them, each on its own tariff with its own billing quirks.
Council expects progress, too. More than 500+ municipalities belong to FCM's Partners for Climate Protection program, whose five milestones begin with a baseline emissions inventory and end with monitoring and reporting results, and FCM notes that municipal governments influence or control half the sources of Canada's GHG emissions. In the US, government agencies spend more than $10 billion a year on energy, and EPA estimates nearly one-third of the energy used in typical government buildings goes to waste. Every one of those figures starts life as a utility bill that someone has to key in.
Where we help
Annual energy and GHG reporting from bills
Every bill for every arena, plant, office and depot becomes structured consumption, cost and emissions data tagged by operation type, so the annual summary and the five-year plan are queries rather than spreadsheet projects.
Water and wastewater plant visibility
Track plant electricity and gas against flow and weather so the largest line in the energy budget gets the scrutiny it deserves, and pump-station accounts stop hiding in the general ledger.
Billing errors across hundreds of accounts
Validate each bill against its tariff and flag demand, rate-class and estimated-read errors before accounts payable pays them, with the evidence attached for the utility dispute.
Climate action plan monitoring
Feed the PCP milestone inventory and council dashboards from the same data finance already pays from, with source bills linked to every figure.
What you get
- Provincial energy and GHG reporting ready before the deadline
- Water, arenas, offices and streetlights in one energy model
- Billing errors caught before payment across every account
- One auditable record for council, finance and the climate plan
Frequently asked questions
Does MartinAI produce the data for Ontario's O. Reg. 25/23 energy and GHG report?
Yes. The regulation asks for annual energy consumption by energy type, the resulting greenhouse gas emissions and the operation type of each building, reported for the calendar year and submitted by July 1. We read every bill for every account, normalize units and dates to the calendar year, tag each meter to its facility and operation type, and keep the source bill linked to each figure so the summary can be produced and defended.
We have hundreds of utility accounts across arenas, plants, offices and streetlights. Can this scale?
That volume is the reason to automate. Bills of any layout, for electricity, gas, water and district energy, are read into one structured record per account and meter. Facilities, operation types and cost centres are mapped once, then every new bill lands in the right place. A small energy or finance team can cover the whole portfolio without adding data-entry headcount.
How does this help with the FCM Partners for Climate Protection milestones?
The first PCP milestone is a baseline emissions inventory, and the last is monitoring and reporting results. Both depend on complete, consistent corporate energy data year after year. Building the inventory directly from validated bills, with emission factors applied per commodity, gives the climate team a defensible baseline and a monitoring number that updates as bills arrive rather than once a year.
Can we catch utility billing errors before accounts payable pays them?
Yes. Each bill is checked against the applicable tariff and against the account's own history: demand charges, rate class, power factor, estimated reads, duplicate periods and unusual consumption. Suspect bills are flagged with the reason and the supporting figures so staff can dispute them with the utility. Clean bills can be passed to the finance system with the coding already applied.