The building sector is the largest energy-consuming sector, accounting for over a third of total global energy consumption. In South Korea, approximately 70% of building stock is more than 15 years old and requires appropriate remodeling and/or retrofitting support. Public buildings in particular are targets of legal control to promote energy conservation and value enhancement as examples of best practices to the private sector. Total energy use intensity (EUI), an energy performance indicator, is commonly used to assess the energy performance of public buildings. However, a considerably negative perception has arisen owing to the shortcomings of EUI itself. This study proposes three cost-effective performance indicators designed to resolve this problem and achieve more objective energy performance benchmarking. The indicators focus more on end uses: "cooling," "heating," and "base-load." They are calculated from monthly energy consumption data using an energy disaggregation technique. Benchmarks for the indicators are made based on the datasets of 4,336 public buildings and a benchmarking database is constructed. The database shows that the most important aspect of energy benchmarking for public buildings is the classification of buildings by their similarity. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.