The Building Advisor

Is it us, or does it feel like it’s all about us lately?

Building Retrofits Need an Extreme Makeover -Reuters – “the industry as a whole needs a robust set of data on post-retrofit performance and payback before they will be convinced that the opportunity to reduce operating costs is real, the risks are low, and the ROI is high enough to justify investments in efficiency.”

Image by Ben Heine

How the Fate of PACE Could Influence the Clean Energy Economy – GreenBiz.com – PACE financing is a potentially revolutionary way to retrofit commercial, residential, and industrial properties with energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. The program overcomes one of the largest hurdles to investment in clean energy — the upfront cost.”

Creating 625,000 jobs and saving $64 billion through energy efficiency – Grist – “Efficiency Works” [PDF], a major new report by Bracken Hendricks, Bill Campbell, and Pen Goodale, finds that a straightforward set of policies aimed at upgrading just 40 percent of the residential and commercial building stock in the United States would:

• Create 625,000 sustained full-time jobs over a decade.
• Spark $500 billion in new investments to upgrade 50 million homes and office buildings.
• Generate as much as $64 billion a year in cost savings for U.S. ratepayers, freeing consumers to spend their money in more productive ways.

Universal Benchmarking Is Essential in the Fight Against Global Warming – Huffington Post – “We need the benchmark numbers to motivate change. Without them, how will we measure progress? How will we create the most effective policies and incentives?”

Image: Ben Heine’s photostream on Flickr

Sauer Incorporated's HQ in Jacksonville, Florida

If the existing building stock of commercial real estate in the U.S. is an agreed-upon goldmine for energy savings, hospitals and health care facilities represent a pot of gold at the end of the efficiency rainbow.

Hospitals use about 2.5 times the amount of energy as a similar-sized commercial building, according to a 2009 estimate published in Environmental Leader. “As a sector, hospitals and health care facilities account for a disproportionate amount of energy use and emissions, EL’s article “Hospitals Due for Energy Efficiency Overhaul” states.

Ed Brady made the healthcare / efficiency connection with BuildingAdvice. Brady, a Service Account Representative for mechanical contracting company Sauer, Inc.’s Columbus, OH location, started using BuildingAdvice in early 2010. In only a few months of using the efficiency platform for commercial buildings, Brady had quoted $750,000 in energy efficiency retrofits to Fayette County Memorial Hospital, a two-building, critical access hospital in Columbus.

“Fayette was ready to think more seriously about their energy spend,” Brady said by phone in August.

Sauer, a four-branch company with an annual revenue of $478 million, had committed to pursuing energy services as part of its overall corporate strategy this year. Sauer, Inc. sister company Ruthrauff Sauer, based in Pittsburgh, PA, recommended BuildingAdvice to Brady and his associates in January of this year. The following month, Brady was putting AirAdvice’s industry-leading energy services platform to work.

“We needed a competitive edge to both maintain existing service agreements and expand new ones,” said Brady. He worked with his AirAdvice support representative, Zack Buquet, to discuss and design a marketing strategy around the product. Together, they agreed that offering free benchmarking was the strategy that best fit Sauer’s needs.

Fayette County Memorial Hospital

“The contract customers weren’t biting on the energy services,” said Brady of his existing client base. “We found that by offering free benchmarking, you will definitely get potential new clients and some nice first meetings,” Brady said. “It doesn’t really take that much of my time to do the benchmarking.”

Brady had done roughly seven benchmarks for a variety of property types when he approached Fayette County Memorial Hospital, whose leadership showed a very favorable reaction to the energy benchmark – especially considering one building scored the lowest on the EnergyStar ratings scale possible, the other very low.

After performing a complete canvas of all mechanical equipment, Brady and associates found boilers from 1974, outdated cooling towers, and rooftop units near ASHRAE end-of-life. Sauer budgeted replacement costs, estimated paybacks and used a BuildingAdvice Energy Audit to propose, among other retrofits:

• $500,000 to replace old boilers and pipes
• $185,000 for rooftop unit replacement
• $20,000 for lighting

The meeting went well, and the hospital is seeking funding by to pay for the bulk of the work by early 2011. In the meantime, the hospital will use in-house resources to address the low-cost recommendation from BuildingAdvice’s Energy Assessment to replace the lighting system. Savings from these upgrades will be show results to be evaluated in January, particularly in electrical usage. The hospital is then eligible to push the lighting retrofit through the local utility to become eligible for rebates.

Brady is clear that his relationship with Fayette is due 100% to starting the energy conversation and following up with BuildingAdvice reports. Doing the assessment allowed him to get in the door, survey the entire facility and identify all of this project work.

Ruthrauff Sauer, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Moreover, Brady has discussed ongoing continuous energy monitoring – another service available through BuildingAdvice – after the hospital has its equipment replaced, to monitor, manage, and ensure ongoing energy savings “in real time,” as Brady puts it.

“BuildingAdvice not only gets people’s attention, it’s useful,” said Brady. “We have had some great successes already.”

I mean look at this guy. Don't you want his help with energy conservation measures?

This week, Joey Penneman went from interning at AirAdvice as a student at the Northwest Energy Efficiency Institute at Lane Community College, to becoming a full time employee at AirAdvice.

For the past six weeks, Joey has been slaving away doing laundry and dishes – er, learning the ropes – at AirAdvice’s downtown Portland offices.

Joey’s duties as an intern were to research and develop the calculations for AirAdvice’s new Residential SmartEnergy Report, the Chiller Diagnostic Application and our Industrial Benchmarking and Diagnostic Application.

“Joey made significant strides after his first two weeks of onboarding projects and trainings,” said Lucas Klesh, AirAdvice Product & Building Expert. “He showed an adept willingness to work with customers in report interpretation and recommendations, which suits the position perfectly.”

As an Associate Energy Analyst, Joey will work with BuildingAdvice channel partners in providing support and training to our customer base on the best practices of implementing BuildingAdvice from a technical perspective. Moreover, he’ll help our customers identify and implement savings opportunities identified by BuildingAdvice’s assessment and audit reports.

After all, getting a contractor rock solid on exactly what energy conservation measures (ECMs) he should suggest to the end user is the best way to drive home imminent savings and project work.

Joey will also continue to assist in developing new products.

Truth be told, Joey is our second employee from Lane’s crack energy training program. Stephen Green, another Associate Energy Analyst, joined AirAdvice under the same auspices earlier this year.

Talk about waste.

[We do, actually, in an upcoming authored article for November’s Facility Management Journal. Watch for it.]

Only 8.4 percent of the $3.2 billion that Congress voted in February 2009 to provide jobs and improve energy efficiency has been spent.

So reported the New York Times’ Green blog from an audit released last week by the inspector general of the Energy Department. Environmental Leader also covered it here, BEPI here.

Worse, the stimulus funds have produced or saved only about 2,300 jobs as of the second quarter of this year. Even New York City has spent less than 2% of the $80.8 million it was awarded, Chicago: 0.1 percent (of $27.6 million). Come on, people!

What’s the problem? Staffing. Not enough people to process and push the new programs. However, the Washington Post provides an alternate viewpoint here; The Energy Department defends itself on The Hill. So natch, it’s a little more complicated than it appears.

The stimulus funds were released through energy and conservation block grants to states and cities. Gotta say, many of our fair states and cities HAVE taken advantage, much of which has been reported here at The Building Advisor.

And on the flip side, Greenbang reported on “The Recovery Act: Transforming the American Economy through Innovation” and what the stimulus HAS set in motion: acceleration in the electric car battery and solar / wind energy industries, expanded broadband Internet access across the U.S., and a smarter energy grid.

For whatever reason, The Building Advisor thought this was appropriate:

Images courtesy current.tv’s wtf blog, The White House, and delagosis on youtube.

Very exciting news around AirAdvice. Joanna Turpin, Contributing Editor of The Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration News and Contractor Excellence, interviewed our very own Tim Kensok, Director of Business Development, yesterday for an article in The NEWS’ November issue on commercial energy audits. After speaking with Tim for the better part of an hour, Joanna called Tim “a virtual fount of knowledge!”

What else is going on? In the Charlotte Business Journal, contributing writer Julie Bird wrote this article last week: Finding a work force for energy. It asks what mid-career engineers can be doing to train themselves for a transition into the energy industry. Funny, Tim talked about that quite a bit for The NEWS. In fact, The Building Advisor has always known what a big part of our services sales training represents, but to hear Tim talk about it, it’s almost as if BuildingAdvice were secondary. What we’re really focused on as a company is helping HVAC contractors find ways to deliver and benefit from offering a new offering: energy savings.

So if there are any contractors in Charlotte who saw the article and want to know more, all they have to do is check out one of our free webinars (or the materials we archive online).

Lastly, in Philadelphia, The Energy Commercialization Institute awarded half a million dollars to eight research projects that will “advance the development of promising energy technologies” (Energy Commercialization gets research money – Philadelphia Business Journal). The Institute was set up with state money and established by Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University.

$160,522 was awarded to five business-university partnerships from the Institute’s Energy Sponsored Research Agreement Fund, which funds projects that businesses are paying universities to help them with, and matches the amount of money being put up by the businesses. Another $350,000 went to three university partnerships from the Energy Translational Research Fund, which provides money to research projects involving more than one university that it thinks will produce results that can be commercialized.

This time around the projects included automotive and industrial applications, low cost printable solar cells, energy storage from smart grid technology, wind turbines, greenhouse-gas emission-free hydrogen fuel from fossil fuel, the development of liquid fuels from low-quality coals and inexpensive components for solar cells.

No energy efficiency technology.

Images courtesy Flickriver and Energy Commercialization Institute.

A month ago,Chris H., Assistant Global Energy Solutions Manager at Solutia Inc., posted “Five Overlooked Building Improvements with Quick ROI that Increase Energy Efficiency” to myfacilities.net.

In it, he touches on a variety of utility-saving solutions, the most pertinent to The Building Advisor being number 3, Energy Management Systems.

He writes,

Greg Galusha of MacDonald Miller in Bellevue, WA

“An energy management system consists of a combination of building management systems and advanced software solutions that work together to control a building’s HVAC operations…The system ensures optimal energy usage, resulting in greater efficiency and lower utility costs.”

He then posted the post to the Building Owners and Managers (BOMA) International LinkedIn Group under the question header, “How can you increase energy efficiency and reduce utilities?”

To date, there have been 56 comments.

Some of them have been from blog spotlightees before, like Greg Galusha of MacDonald-Miller Facility Solutions (“MacDonald-Miller Finds BuildingAdvice Perfect Fit for Energy Efficiency in Small to Midsize Buildings“) and Zack Buquet, one of our own here at AirAdvice and a Building Advisor contributor.

The long and the short of it is this: talk of replacing HVAC units, building envelopes, window film, demand response, lighting, and reflective insulators, elevator motor “soft starters.” From the short and sweet to vociferously verbose, there is no shortage of ideas out there on how to save dough on energy. We just need to DO it.

Great comments from Gary Markowitz, President, Kilojolts Consulting Group, Inc. & KCG Energy LLC. Gary touches on culture – shifting the mindset of a company toward energy efficiency as a priority. Julius Walcyznski at Canada’s Pulse Energy has some great things to say as well regarding occupant engagement.

Zack Buquet, Energy Services Business Consultant at AirAdvice

But here at AirAdvice, we’re looking at the causes of energy waste in buildings, and work with HVAC contractors to attack the problem. Those contractors in turn work directly with the building owners and managers BOMA serves, the decisionmakers behind energy efficiency decisions. Until those owners and managers recognize that they are throwing money away unnecessarily, the building’s occupant engagement can’t happen.

BOMA’s LinkedIn discussion also contains quite a bit of chatter around energy benchmarking, assessments and audits; it’s great to hear these words being used with knowledge, even if it is within a fairly specific community.

Mike Zimmerman, CEO of BuildingIQ in Sydney, Australia, wrote:

Mike Zimmerman, CEO of BuildingIQ

“…Energy Reporting systems such as Lucid Designs provides energy-use metrics from meters and the BMS [Building Management System?]. There are also now Energy Optimization technologies that supervise how the BMS runs and and make the building much more intelligent. Our system, called BuildingIQ…is a Predictive Energy Optimization system that incorporates energy prices, weather forecasts and ASHRAE comfort models to optimize energy use, cost and comfort. This type of proactive system that interacts with the BMS can save 10-20% of total building energy and is paid for on a subscription basis…”

Throughout the conversation, claims of savings between 10-30% on utility bills are made.

Where do you think a realistic savings percentage average from the use of energy management systems looks like?

And is this savings driven more by occupants or building systems?

Drop us a comment!

Portland-based PECI has won an $18.8 million contract from the California Energy Commission to manage an “EnergySmart Jobs” program that will create more than 200 California jobs.

The “EnergySmart Jobs” program will provide energy efficiency training throughout California to implement efficiency upgrades on commercial buildings. The company will also hire and retain over 200 contractor and energy surveyor positions. The program will focus on regions within California with lots of opportunity for efficiency savings and high unemployment.

The 18-month program is paid for with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding and is slated to deliver $13.9 million in initial energy savings for electricity rate payers during the first year and a half.

The program will also create three jobs in Portland, Sustainable Business Oregon reports.

Additional program partners include private contractors, utilities, manufacturers, and the California Conservation Corps. “The Conservation Corps ‘Corpsmembers’ are comprised of unemployed or otherwise economically disadvantaged people between the ages of 18 and 25, with the intention of helping those in greatest need get a ‘head start’ in the employment market,” according to PECI’s press release.

PECI has a longstanding relationship with the State of California, having delivered energy efficiency programs throughout the state for 20 years and employing 28 in the state.

New York is definitely where its at these days, what with those mandatory benchmarking laws swinging into effect and the Empire State Building’s and sustainable upgrades showing folks how it’s done.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) posted a byline in the Huffington Post on the iconic spire (did you know it is officially a Wonder of the World?), outlining the genius of the Empire State Building’s overhaul:

“…the retrofit will deliver improved windows, high-efficiency light bulbs, and among many other things, renovated heating and cooling systems at a cost of $13 million after netting out other savings. By 2013, this plan will have reduced the Empire State Building’s energy usage by 40%. The $4.4 million in annual energy savings will have completely paid for the costs of the retrofit project 3 years after completion.”

The story behind the retrofits is told at the Empire State Building sustainability exhibit, where a glowing cube and other interactive elements beckon visitors to look underneath the landmark at the energy saving innovations beneath.

Right now, the Empire State Building consumes the energy equivalent of 40,000 single-family homes.

Rep. Maloney writes about how she convened a hearing to learn more about the Empire State Building’s energy efficiency progress. She emerged learning a few things, one of them being,

“…government has a role to play in shining a spotlight on the economic, environmental and consumer benefits of retrofits, but it is the private and non-profit sectors that will roll up their sleeves, nail down the economics and make these retrofits happen.”

Across the Empire State, buildings are smartening up, with no little thanks to OptimumEnergy. The Sun-Herald.com picked up this press release from OptimumEnergy, maker of software to increase energy efficiency through HVAC, which trumpets the company’s latest New York state deals (including the 1271 Avenue of the Americas building in New York City; a GE Healthcare manufacturing facility in Troy; and Westfield Group’s Sunrise shopping center in Massapequa). OptimumEnergy estimates its reduction software to save 9.9M kWh annually across the building portfolio.

In honor of that The Building Advisor offers you this break from our regularly scheduled programming.

“Empire State of Mind”

In other news this week, EarthTechling decided to accentuate the negative in its coverage of the recent report from Pike Research, “Commercial Green Retrofit Interest Low.” Yes, they do point out the $41.1 billion potential savings from retrofits for new construction over the next 10 years. On the downside, nobody cares, apparently.

New York will fix that!

Images courtesy Doobybrain.com, Inhabitat and YouTube.

Summer must be here because it’s even hot in Oregon. All over the country, HVAC technicians are working their fannies off to keep tenants cool.

And news of worldwide efforts to increase energy efficiency in commercial buildings keeps rolling like sweat down an AC technician’s temple. Such as Australia’s Labor Party announcing that it will offer a 50% tax deduction bonus for “green building work” from July 1, 2011 completed for buildings of two stars or less to bring them up to four stars or higher. This from The Fifth Estate, which called the energy efficiency sector “his consistently touted as offering the cheapest and fastest route to greenhouse gas reduction” and quoting the Labor Party’s web site estimate that the incentive will offer a $1 billion boost over the life of the scheme.

Last week Pike Research issued a report estimating that a full $41.1 billion could be saved in energy expenses every year by instituting a 10-year retrofit program, Environmental Leader reported and BEPN picked up. Pike’s report states that more than 80% of commercial buildings in the US are over 10 years old, and a 10-year retrofit program would cost only $22.5 billion. That’s almost a 50% profit margin – not a bad bet.

Last week, ASHRAE President Lynn G. Bellenger testified on optimizing federal building efficiency before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement to help them examine the federal government’s role in greening buildings.

And The Building Advisor’s poster child of the week award for asset stewardship goes to Brandywine Realty Trust, a REIT that owns, develops, and manages commercial buildings. It earned two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star labels for its 5 Greentree Centre, Marlton, New Jersey project and its Concord Airport Plaza – a project in Concord, California. Although both buildings had previously earned Energy Star ratings, they were re-commissioned and re-certified again for 2010, according to a press release.

Bring it on, Summer of 2010! BuildingAdvice is ready when you are. And if you’re into coil cleaning, take a deep dive with Green Life Style Magazine’s “Huge energy savings in your commercial HVAC” post. It’ll make you want to get into parts of your air conditioner you never knew you had.

Check out this article in GreenerBuildings on the amount of waste in commercial buildings. Its somewhat baroque yet applicable metaphor likens building operation waste through car-terms, like “commuting solo every day to work in an RV purchased for that once-a-year camping trip.”

The Building Advisor’s favorite part?

“…ICF International estimated that if every commercial building owner in the U.S. did an energy audit of their buildings, it would take 1,000 auditors more than 13 years, working 365 days per year, to deliver recommendations on upgrades for 5 million buildings.”

Hey speaking of, if you missed yesterday’s free webinar, “Energize Your Service and Retrofit Sales,” you can get recordings and slides from the webinar here. And it’s only the first of a three part series – you can still get in on our July 29 and August 5 sessions 10am ET / 1pm PT.