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

Shell Ridge Property Management Co., Inc. maintains approximately 300,000 square feet of commercial space in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1980, Shell Ridge has specialized in asset management strategies for small medical offices. Its 15 buildings range from 40,000 to 100,000 square feet.

Shell Ridge’s medical office properties represent a desirable portfolio for mechanical contractors. Marina Mechanical, a 50-year-old company headquartered in San Leandro, Calif., began maintenance for a Pleasanton, Calif. Shell Ridge property five years ago. In the ensuing years of service, energy conservation was rarely discussed.

But when Marina began feeling heat from its competitors in the middle of a down market, it turned to its best customers to expand relationships.

Marina had obtained training on the BuildingAdvice energy services diagnostic platform in November of 2009, and began the process of leveraging its action-oriented reports as a differentiator.

Gamechanging Energy Services Offering

“We offered to show both the property manager and owner at Shell Ridge, some sample energy benchmarking and assessment reports,” says Denny Mann, Vice President of Service with Marina Mechanical, when explaining how he got the energy conversation started. “The property manager was actually very educated on energy benchmarking, and as a result, very interested. Once she saw the type of information the BuildingAdvice reports gave, she was extremely interested.”

“BuildingAdvice differentiated Marina from other mechanical contractors waiting to get their foot in the door,” says Denny.

Denny offered to do complimentary energy assessments on two Shell Ridge buildings. Shell Ridge has several buildings where Peak Day Pricing, a program of local utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), would come into play.

Peak Day Pricing (PDP) is PG&E’s demand response program, which acts as an incentive for business owners to curtail their facility’s energy use during times of peak usage. During the summer, PDP substantially raises energy prices on “event days” (above 98 degrees); businesses have a 24 hour notice when there will be an event to lower their energy usage for that day.  By charging a very high rate on event days, PG&E motivates customers to invest in strategies that will lower their consumption overall, and especially on the peak days.

Peak day pricing is specialized to the PGE territory, but not a unique phenomenon.

“Peak day pricing is definitely acting as a market stimulator for energy services and spurs client interest,” Denny said. “I think soon people will be lined up to get involved with energy reduction conversations.”

Taking Action

In going over the results of the assessment reports, conversations began about what Marina could do to help Shell Ridge avoid demand charges across the company’s property portfolio.

Which led to a second meeting with the owner, and an agreement to generate Energy Benchmarking Reports on all of the Shell Ridge properties to determine Energy Star scores.

“BuildingAdvice reports marked our transition from just being their mechanical contractor to forming a partnership. It completely transformed the relationship,” says Denny.

With portfolio-wide benchmarks on the docket, Marina took recommendations from the first two properties’ energy assessments to Shell Ridge ownership.

“BuildingAdvice helped us identify that the building was running when it didn’t need to be,” said Denny. Supply and reset strategies were created, so that the building was not not pouring 55 degree air into the interior when clients were not there, all of which were identified in the report.

Two low- and no-cost recommendations were approved and completed April of this year. Shell Ridge made the decision to complete the service based on the return on investment outlined in BuildingAdvice’s Energy Assessment Report. In addition to revisions to lighting and HVAC schedules based on peak day pricing, the report showed a seven-year payback on a demand control vent.

“We’re letting those changes take effect,” said Denny. After a 12-month period, savings achieved will be tabulated.

Next Steps and the Advent of Mandatory Energy Disclosure

As of late June, Marina wrapped up the energy benchmarking process on all of the Shell Ridge portfolio. Based on buildings’ Energy Star scores, Marina will make recommendations on which properties need energy assessments.

Looking ahead, the mandates of California’s Assembly Bill 1103 (AB 1103) state that non-residential business owners or their agents are required to input energy consumption and other building data into the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager system, which generates an energy efficiency rating for the building.

As of January 1, 2010, AB 1103 mandated disclosure of a building’s energy data and rating of the previous year to prospective buyers and lessees of the entire building or lenders financing the entire building. That deadline has since been pushed back, and the task of devising a disclosure schedule has fallen to the California Energy Commission (CEC). The CEC is in the process of drafting a new compliance schedule; January 1, 2011 is speculated to be the new required disclosure date.

New York City, Washington DC and other regions have adopted similar required energy data disclosure. Smart owners and managers are on the move to meet deadlines.

Net Impact

The ability to offer energy services differentiates providers. Marina knew a competitor was making an aggressive play for service agreements in Shell Ridge’s multiple locations. Yet, in the same timeframe Marina stayed in discussions with Shell Ridge by centering their meetings around energy services through BuildingAdvice.

“After going through BuildingAdvice training, we quickly realized that being able to offer our customers a systematic, low-cost / no-cost approach to reducing their energy consumption would change the way we were viewed.”

BuildingAdvice has “helped us retain current business and significantly raised the bar on the services we offer.”

The Anchorage, Alaska skyline

The Anchorage Daily News ran a great byline from Mark Masteller, Alaska director of the Cascadia Green Building Council, last week, titled “Perhaps energy efficiency needs sex appeal.” Now, The Building Advisor knows that sexiness is an ongoing theme on this blog, but the point really can’t be restated enough.

Mark makes some great points about energy efficiency in commercial buildings not just in Alaska but the world outside, reminding us of that whopping 40% of US energy that goes to commercial buildings and asserting, “if you’re a building or business owner you needed EE [energy efficiency] yesterday.” In a timely tie-in, he points out how the oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico reminds Americans of our dependency on unsustainable fossil fuels. He also reports that an entire day of Alaska’s Business of Clean Energy conference was devoted to energy efficiency – a very unsexy day, but an important one nonetheless.

Mark Masteller of Anchorage's Cascadia Green Building Council

Masteller makes an interesting point that Alaskans use twice as much energy as “folks Outside” on a per-capita basis, making their commercial buildings’ carbon footprint – nationally estimated at 39% – even higher. For residents of unemployment-rate choked areas like Alaska and even Portland, Ore., resulting cleantech and greentech jobs are an added perk to putting more eggs in the energy efficiency basket. His point about “off the shelf,” readily available technology, could be the best part:

“With rising fossil energy costs, EE building improvements can provide a handsome return on investment. One progressive Anchorage business owner recently reported being able to reduce electricity use by 32 percent and natural gas use by 40 percent, with readily available equipment. And his return on investment far exceeded anything you could get in the stock market!”

One of our channel partners in Anchorage driving an energy study with the Alaska Energy Authority

BuildingAdvice is a great example of one of those readily available technologies. Control Contractors’ Anchorage branch is currently using BuildingAdvice for a study in conjunction with the Alaska Energy Authority to benchmark and assess the business residents of two utility companies as part of a study of energy usage in the Anchorage area. Watch for an article on the study in the upcoming issue of the Mechanical Contractors’ Association of America summer newsletter, Smart Solutions.

Images courtesy ifihadtopickfive blog, Cascadia Green Building Council, and Control Contractors.

I recently came back across an article from Buildings Magazine about energy benchmarking in buildings.   We are talking with a lot of people about benchmarking these days, so this is very top of mind.

The article raises a good question:  “is it ever possible to do an apples-to-apples comparison with another building, given that each one is unique? “  And goes on to answer that yes, it is, “as long as we’re comfortable with a degree of ambiguity around the edges of the data. It’s no different than miles per gallon, used to define a car’s performance. We all know that different drivers, different fuels, and different roads will change this [number] by as much as 20 percent or more…”
This is an important statement about the reasons for and limitations of benchmarking.  It is to get a general idea where you stand and if you should be investing in energy efficiency.

But, benchmarking is not an audit or assessment.   This point is made in section 6 on what to do with the data once you have it:  “Benchmarking can only tell you your ‘score’; it can’t tell you how to improve. It hints at potential for improvement, but you still need to figure out where to go.” You need an understanding of how your facility is used and the features of systems within your building.
Once you have your benchmarking data in hand, conduct an energy-efficiency audit. An assessment like this will help you pinpoint why/where you’re losing energy.  That’s where the building service provider, with the assistance of certain technologies, really comes into play.  Mechanical contractors, energy engineers, energy consultants, and others who know building systems and how they function are the ideal people to make the connection between where a building is now and where it needs to be.

This post first appeared as an editorial in the March 2009 edition of Building Operating Management magazine.  It was written by Edward Sullivan.

Cars and trucks are required to have them.  Washer, dryers, and refrigerators have to have them too.  So why shouldn’t buildings need labels disclosing how much energy they use?

That question is drawing the attention of government bodies from coast to coast.  The District of Columbia is phasing in requirements for buildings to benchmark energy performance and then make results public.  Starting next year, California will require owners to report energy consumption information to prospective buyers, tenants, and lenders.  New York City, another trend setter in the regulation of buildings, has held hearings on a measure to mandate energy-use labeling.

The idea of energy-use disclosure is nothing new.  The voluntary ENERGY STAR label for buildings has been around for more than a decade.  A growing number of facility executives see that label – part of the widely recognized ENERGY STAR label brand – as a valuable tool for communicating with audiences inside and outside of the organization.

But a mandate for energy-use disclosure?  To some facility executives, that sort of regulation is anathema.  They know they’ll be on the hot seat if a building gets a low energy score.

That’s not an easy position to be in.  But climate change is putting energy efficiency on the top management agenda.  It is growing more likely that the senior executives will want to know how buildings are performing.  Why not get a jump on things by finding out what your ENERGY STAR score is?  As Brandon Lorenz’s article in this issue shows, a low score can be a powerful tool to motivate organizations to support energy improvements.  And even if it doesn’t free up resources, it may give you, and the rest of your organization, a glimpse of what lies ahead.