President Obama’s administration has touted energy efficiency as the cheapest, cleanest, fastest energy source and a July 2009 McKinsey report concluded that, “energy efficiency offers a vast, low-cost energy resource for the U.S. economy – but only if the nation can craft a comprehensive and innovative approach to unlock it.”

EDF has developed an innovative approach to unlock energy efficiency in the commercial building space.  It’s called Climate Corps, and here’s how it works: Climate Corps places talented MBA students from top-ranking business schools in leading companies to make the business case for energy efficiency investments in office buildings and data centers.

We just completed our second year of the program and the outcomes are quite impressive.  Overall, the 2009 class of Climate Corps fellows uncovered efficiencies in lighting, computer equipment and heating and cooling systems that could:

• Save more than $54 million in net operational costs over the lifetime of the projects;
• Cut the equivalent of 160 million kilowatt hours of energy use annually—enough to power 14,000 homes;
• Avoid 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year— equivalent to taking more than 12,000 SUVs off the road.

How did our fellows achieve such astounding outcomes?  By keeping an eye toward the “low-hanging fruit:” the no-cost or low-cost solutions that can provide companies with loads of savings.

Here are just a few of this summer’s stories:

• Neelam Bhatia, a Climate Corps fellow at the technology company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), discovered that rebate opportunities from the local utility could reduce the upfront costs and payback periods of AMD’s energy efficiency investments.  Her diligence allowed AMD to capitalize on a rebate worth more than $50,000 for cooling equipment that had been installed at AMD a week before the internship began.
• At North Carolina Central University, Climate Corps fellows David Fox and Sahil Thaker found that rather than allowing the limited number of students who stay on campus for the summer to remain spread out in the dorms they use during the year, NC Central could consolidate them into one or two buildings. By cutting down on the number of buildings that needed to be fully lit and air conditioned throughout the summer, the University could save $74,000 each year.
• At Cisco (where I worked as a Climate Corps fellow in 2008) Sarah Shapiro concluded that small increases in the ambient temperature of the company’s large data labs could save the company approximately $1.8 million and 18 million kWh of electricity annually, without harming laboratory equipment.

What’s even more exciting is that Climate Corps is actually delivering on its promise to save money and cut greenhouse gas emissions.  Last year, the inaugural class of Climate Corps fellows identified projects that could save 120 million kWh of energy.  To date, projects that account for 97% of that potential energy savings have either been completed or are in implementation at the 2008 host companies.

We’re now recruiting host companies and MBA students for next summer – find out how you can join us here!

To read more stories from the 2009 fellows, visit the Climate Corps website and check out the blog posts by this year's fellows.

This content is cross-posted on GreenBiz.com

At the same time, legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions is making its way through Congress and the world community is preparing to hammer out a new climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

So are we done? Not by a long shot.

While many on the biggest companies “get it,” there remains “the next 50,000” – those companies that make up mainstream corporate America that don’t yet get environmental sustainability or worse, haven’t even heard of it. So where must we go from here to spread environmental sustainability from the Fortune 500 to the next 50,000?

Building an energy efficiency movement

Every company uses energy and could do so more efficiently. A 2009 McKinsey study found that we can get 4 to 5 gigatons of greenhouse gas reductions through cost-positive building and vehicle efficiency. In other words, we can make a lot of money and cut a lot of emissions simultaneously using proven technologies.

Unfortunately, it won’t be as easy as it sounds. Companies fail to reap the benefits of energy efficiency for reasons that have nothing to do with what we learned in Econ 101. In the real world, managers are overburdened, useful information is hard to find, lease arrangements stand in the way of smart investments and competition for corporate dollars is sharp.

Even if energy prices rise under a future climate cap (estimates range from 25 to 50 cents per household per day), it likely won’t be enough to overcome organizational barriers. But to stabilize the global climate, we simply must harvest these savings. We need to build a new business movement for energy efficiency – one based not on cardigan sweaters but on smart economics and a new generation of business leaders that will cut through organizational red-tape to find real savings.

Stimulating innovation

A cap on carbon, if enacted, will go a long way to stabilize carbon financing and provide a level playing field for investors in low-carbon innovation. Capital will flow to support advances in clean vehicles, renewable energy and carbon sequestration. But not all progress comes from start-ups with angel investors. We must also stimulate environmental innovation within the corporate structure.

The impetus can come from the top because when executives set rigorous goals and metrics for measuring them, they unleash innovation throughout the company. GE’s Ecomagination program, which has reduced costs by over $100 million while building clean tech solutions, is a good example of this approach. Innovation can also come from the bottom up, as illustrated by Toyota’s “Treasure Hunt” process, which uses operators, engineers and maintenance staff to find process innovations and energy savings.

Capturing operational excellence

For most companies, including those that provide business capital, environmental issues are still thought of as a liability rather than an opportunity. To build value, firms must think beyond compliance. Smart companies are positioning themselves to compete in a carbon constrained world, where efficiency and innovation trump risk management.

More and more tools and best practices are available for systematically identifying opportunity and measuring improvements in environmental and business performance. We must build those tools into standard business investment decision-making and move toward a world where environmental management is synonymous with asset management.

Driving lifecycle improvement

Companies will want to focus first on their own operations, but for many small and medium-sized businesses, their biggest impacts lie not within their own fencelines but in the lifecycle of the products they buy and sell. And while smaller companies may not feel that they have the clout to create supply chain mandates, they do have ability to ask pointed questions and shop around for the best prices. Why should any purchaser pay for the extra energy or water or wasted raw materials embedded in products made by another company that has not yet embraced sustainability?

Today, we are all feeling the stress of a pinched economy, resource constraints and future regulatory mandates. At the same time, we’re seeing examples every day of companies that have successfully turned environmental sustainability into competitive advantage. By building an energy efficiency movement, stimulating innovation, capturing operational excellence and driving lifecycle change, we can bring the next 50,000 companies along on the ride.

This content is cross-posted on Environmental Leader

The U.S. commercial sector spends $108 billion/year on building energy bills, with more than $20 billion spent on office building energy costs alone.  Typically, a 50,000-square-foot office building of average operating efficiency can reduce costs by $40,000 per year just through no-cost and low-cost efficiency upgrades.

EDF has a program called Climate Corps that places MBA students at host companies for a summer to “run the numbers” on energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions –and the results are almost always astounding.  Here are a few examples to give you a sense of the range of savings to be had:

• An intern at the IT services company SunGard uncovered lighting timer errors that, when fixed, will save the company nearly $20,000/year.

• An intern for Houston-based property management firm Crescent Real Estate identified efficiency upgrades at key properties that would cut electricity costs by $400,000 annually.

• An intern at grocery company Ahold (owner Stop'n Shop and Giant) calculated that if skylights were installed at just a third of stores, they'd save over 13,000 tons CO₂ per year with a 5 year NPV nearing $30 million.

We’re recruiting now for companies to participate in the Climate Corps program next summer – join us!

*The vertical axis shows cost per ton of emission reductions.  And all the blocks hanging below the horizon represent things we can do now that have “negative cost” – in other words, we save more money than we spend.

Efficiency. Renewable Energy. Energy Savings. It seems so easy: Add recycle bins, upgrade light bulbs, buy more efficient desktop monitors, make all your company cars hybrid. Then slap a big green blurb about sustainability efforts on your homepage and you're done. Is becoming sustainable really so easy?

Meaningful change within a corporate setting is clearly not so cut and dry. With all the green press and government support of green energy initiatives, it's easy not to see what might be going on behind the scenes within a corporation that makes sustainability become a lasting value.

I've spent my summer working at salesforce.com, in the heart of San Francisco, working on energy efficiency projects. Green is a big part of this city's culture, LEED is required of all new offices, reusable water bottles are the norm, Styrofoam has been outlawed and composting is mandatory.

When you dig deeper into a corporation, the task of achieving sustainable operations is highly complex. I focused on two projects: A data center asset management analysis and a flex work space analysis. Both projects speak to the in-depth research and planning that is required to integrate environmental factors into the corporate decision-making process.

At the start, as with any research project, gaining access to critical data and incorporating new metrics into the company's system seemed to be the biggest challenges. Ultimately, I hope these new analytics will support the work being done to develop a sustainability policy, as well as help make sustainability an ongoing corporate priority.

Salesforce.com has already implemented a number of energy efficiency measures in their data centers. They utilize hot and cold aisles, maintain high utilization rates, the cables are bundled and organized at all sites, they perform regular technology refreshes and old servers are removed when they are no longer being used. The new task has been to dig deeper. As with any service provider, reducing energy consumption must be balanced with the No. 1 priority of availability and customer satisfaction.

Within these guidelines, my research sought to look at the variables and integrate new methodologies for technology upgrades so that energy and carbon emission are integrated into the decision-making. This is where sustainability acts as a form of change management. The only way to continue making energy efficiency a part of the decision-making process is to provide a thorough analysis that maintains existing priorities and proves carbon can also be mitigated.

As the leader in enterprise cloud computing, salesforce.com has built sustainability into its product design. The service is accessed directly online, eliminating the need for manufacturing, packaging and shipping. Utilizing the Force.com platform maximizes the use of hardware and electricity through a multi-tenant architecture scaled for many customers. I believe the Climate Corp's research and other sustainability efforts will extend additional reassurance that operational efficiency is also being made a priority.

Through the data center project I've worked with employees across many departments, including asset management, procurement, upgrades, architecture, finance, capacity planning, and engineering to make energy efficiency changes a reality. Working across so many functional areas in a company makes obtaining data and building streamlined systems challenging. I was tasked with building a tool that integrates data from many of these various sources. I've grappled with how to link operations with asset management in one tool. The decisions made in regard to new models and technology are ever changing. Once an upgrade decision is made, new models are announced and analysis begins again.

My work is based in this dynamic world. We developed and used modeling tools so as things change we could see the immediate impact on energy efficiency. Using the tools daily made it become part of everyday decision-making. I have spent much of my time gathering the data that will lead to the analysis of consumption as well as looking at how efficiency and cost is viewed in the next round of upgrades. It's been important for me to not only look one step forward, but also set the stage for long term decision-making with the same methodology. I've worked with each team to learn their strengths and weakness and what they find critical, building all of these needs into a dynamic tool that will benefit the company long into the future.

Looking forward I can clearly see the benefits that these energy efficiency strategies will have on the company. Making energy usage and analysis information widely available to a cross-functional team and successfully managing the change will be, I believe, the key to improving energy efficiency at salesforce.com, as it would any company. At salesforce.com, the focus is on long-term planning that incorporates the risks related to a carbon-constrained world. Figuring out feasible changes and implementing them today is the challenge.

I spent my summer with TXU Energy (TXUE) in Dallas, Texas, identifying ways to improve the energy efficiency of the company's two main office buildings.

TXUE is an electricity provider in Texas with over 2 million customers. It plans to invest $100 million to develop innovative energy efficiency products and services to help its customers save energy.

With so much in-house experience and expertise, I originally felt as if I were bringing coals to Newcastle. However, I was able to identify some great opportunities with the help of the TXUE team.

During a detailed energy audit of one of the buildings, we discovered there's one room in the building that is in use 24/7. However, the rest of the building is only occupied during normal daytime business hours. As a result, the chiller, condenser water pumps, cooling tower and air handling units (which use tons of electricity) are never turned off, even though a majority of the building is unoccupied most of the time.

We then discovered a small air conditioning unit that was installed to cool the small room in the event of electricity loss to the building and realized that we could use it on nights and weekends as the primary source of cooling, rather than as a backup. This allows TXUE to turn off all the HVAC equipment (except for the small unit) on nights and weekends. This one project does not require an investment and is expected to save nearly $100,000 dollars annually in energy costs and reduce energy in this one building nearly 20 percent.

I believe this idea had been overlooked simply because people tend to think of materials solely in the context for which they were designed. The small air conditioning unit was installed for backup purposes, so no one really thought of it as something that could be used as a part of daily operations. If we all get into the habit of looking at resources and thinking about ways that we can use them outside of the original design intent, we might find more opportunities for efficiency like this one.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a growing trend among real estate owners  to create more energy efficient facilities. In a similar way, an increasing number of tenants are looking for ways to drive down operating costs where possible. For example, here at Biltmore Farms, we have a specific tenant in Biltmore Park that holds environmental stewardship as a core company value. As a property manager, what can we do to help and encourage tenants to exercise that shared principle?

Green leasing is becoming more popular in real estate these days as building owners and tenants find themselves codependent when it comes to reducing consumption.

Leasing Strategies
The property owner seeking more efficient buildings will need to be creative in crafting leasing agreements. For the tenant, aside from the obvious physical attributes of an available space, the two most important cost factors are: a) the monthly rent per square foot, which is determined by the class rating of the space and the local competition for that class and b) the estimated monthly operating expense charge.

The once common gross lease, where each tenant pays only one lump sum to the landlord that will be used to cover both rent and operating expenses has gone by the wayside. Today, the net lease is more common, with rent and operating expenses as separate payments. Under a net lease scenario, the landlord pays the operating expenses, then passes the costs on to all tenants in a building, perhaps on a pro rata basis. These expenses are usually charged monthly on an estimated basis, with a credit or charge for the difference from the actual cost at the end of the year.

So, with tenants paying for energy, how can landlords become more vested in the effort for greater efficiency? The best incentive, aside from the ability to advertise more competitive operating costs, is a financial one. Under an expense stop arrangement, if an operator can make the building more efficient than the baseline estimation and rate set forth in the lease, the landlord retains the difference. This could be the simplest and most practical strategy for building managers to take the necessary steps to reduce how much electricity, gas and water are consumed in the building.

However, barring unusual circumstances, energy reduction upwards of 25 percent in many newer buildings is going to require considerable involvement from tenants. After all, it's usually the tenant that upfits the vanilla envelope with appliances, office equipment and lighting of choice, and it's the tenant that determines usage. It's important to recognize that the presence of energy-hungry devices and the inclusion of elaborate controls aren't the only determining factors for a building's performance.

The biggest hurdle to realizing energy savings is human behavior. As an engineer recently told me, "Even the most primitive building with a control system comprised of only thermostats and light switches can be operated very efficiently by people that are trained properly."

If the tables turned and landlords were the only party to see benefits from efficiency, it's unlikely that tenants would make much of a reduction effort. One solution is for landlords to incentivize lessees to meet target reductions, through the sharing of costs and benefits. For example, who should be responsible for fronting the cost of an occupancy sensor that turns off lights and HVAC supply in a tenant area? The tenant will achieve a lower energy bill, but the landlord achieves a facility with greater value and functionality. The landlord should be able to apply some of the tenant's prospective savings toward the investment. There's no better time for a landlord and tenant to work together on efficiency than when planning the space upfit, and this should be accounted for in the leasing contract.

It's also important that building managers be able to accurately measure consumption so a tenant can measure and track usage patterns. It's easy, and relatively inexpensive, to install sub-meters – or smart meters – for individual spaces during building construction, but if that equipment didn't make it into the building, it could be installed as a retrofit. Equipping finished spaces with sub-meters can be cost-prohibitive, but there are some reasonable options today, especially with wireless technology.

A Group Effort
Energy efficiency in a commercial building can be best achieved when building managers and tenants are aligned in the effort. These parties can work together to make the needed investments and behavior changes, and they can share the rewards. Occupancy sensors, tighter building envelopes, energy management controls, frequent HVAC commissioning, low-power light fixtures and daylight harvesting are examples of strategic expenses that most tenants on a short-term lease can't easily implement. With the involvement of the building owner, these measures can help to make operating expense rates more appealing for the lessee, while maximizing the value of their building on an income-producing basis. Additional benefits for the owner include reduced vacancy, increased flexibility in economic slumps, and greater tenant satisfaction.

If you'd like more details on writing a greener leasing arrangement, check out BOMA's most recent Guide to Writing a Commercial Real Estate Lease.

This content is cross-posted on GreenBiz.com

I’ve worked with Biltmore Farms in Asheville, NC this summer, deciphering energy bills, tracking power demand trends and seeking cost-effective ways for the operations team to boost efficiency in their building portfolio.

Biltmore Farms is a residential and commercial community development company that is motivated to find new ways to keep quality high and costs low. In addition to the additional merits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, energy management can prove to be a great way to control costs and raise a property’s value.

One of my first meetings at Biltmore Farms was with our regional electricity provider’s customer representative to examine our bills. We looked at a building’s power demand patterns on a daily basis over the last few years and determined how usage variations impacted charges.

I thought electricity costs were fairly straightforward with peak rates being slightly higher than off-peak rates, but as my Climate Corps colleague Ryan Whisnant describes, it turns out that rate structures are a little more involved.

Billing intricacies might include peak demand rates varying by season and seasonal peak time schedules that follow a different seasonal calendar than that of demand rates. Another common component is the ratchet: For example, facilities pay exceedingly high demand charges during peak times, yet must meet minimum billing demands. Even if the billing period demand is drastically reduced, minimum power demand charges might be 75% of a previous season’s maximum monthly demand. So, with complex usage patterns in buildings combined with tricky billing structures, the smartest plan to significantly reducing energy costs will involve some careful analysis and planning.

Mentioned in a recently published article, a study by Johnson Controls Inc and the International Facility Management Association found that 71% of business leaders are paying more attention to energy efficiency than they were a year ago. After discussions with energy management and lighting professionals, utility providers and building managers, it’s clear to me that building owners are starting to take the task more seriously. I’ve discovered many tools that can simplify the task in a building, and I’ve wondered why the broader real estate industry hasn’t been more aggressive in taking advantage of these opportunities for savings.

There seem to be many reasons why efficiency improvements could move faster, but there are clues from the construction process.

For example, at one point in its construction life, the commercial office building was just a shell. Shortly before that, someone had to ante up a hefty sum of equity, leverage the remainder and, since most jobs don’t meet budget, add additional equity to keep pace with ballooning construction and materials costs. Upfront costs can interfere with sophisticated savings implements, or if they were originally included in the proposal, the items are potentially removed from plans at the value engineering stage under competition for funds. Energy management systems, open protocol building controls, ultra-efficient HVAC units, dimmable lighting fixtures, monitoring sensors or other newfangled gadgets that aren’t absolutely essential to the building or future tenants will be first to disappear.

In many instances, modern buildings are outfitted with proprietary control systems that are the industry standard but are increasingly too incompatible to be fully controlled by modern devices. This limits their ability to provide energy fine-tuning, but replacement might be too expensive. It could also be that yesterday’s sophisticated device is simply outdated by today’s standard. New innovations in air conditioning and lighting are continually making it easier to achieve a payback on the investment, but the future savings from these and other devices could be challenging to fit into a cost-benefit discussion at this stage, especially when the financial benefits are difficult to measure.

Split incentives can be tricky too; if a developer is going to invest in these types of instruments, there needs to be some assurance of a return either through realized operational savings if the building will be retained, or through increased net operating income if the building will be sold in the future.

As the business community increasingly seeks to improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, it is important not to overlook opportunities that only exist during the construction phase. In my next post, I’ll consider some often-unrealized opportunities that arise in commercial leased space through leasing arrangements.

This content is cross-posted on GreenBiz.com

Window film is cool stuff. Literally. It reflects the sun and insulates buildings. It is used to keep buildings cool on hot, sunny days, and to keep heat from escaping in cold climates.

According to an article published on FacilitiesNet in 2006, window film can reduce heat penetration up to 80 percent and improve insulation by as much as 32 percent for single-pane windows or as much as 23 percent for double-pane glass. Anecdotal evidence repeatedly notes increased employee comfort from the decreased solar glare and better insulation.

Given these benefits, several of this year’s Climate Corps fellows have been looking at the possibility of installing window film at our sites.

Our initial questions about good sources for information on performance have spawned a vibrant information exchange, with data and demonstrations all over the country. At one site, 3M is installing a sample section of window film to illustrate its impact on temperature. This demonstration should also provide an idea of what the film will look like and what the impact will be on the amount of light coming through the glass. Another Climate Corps fellow shared a model from her local utility that allows anyone with building information to estimate the cost and benefit of installing film at that site.

Why are we so concerned about the cost-benefit analysis?

Well, we’re MBA students, so that’s a start. But the bigger issue is that window film is expensive: I have seen estimates ranging from $3 to $12 per square foot (PG&E does a good job of providing some ranges).

This can stall the conversation in leased buildings where the tenant pays the energy bills. In long lease situations, this may not be a problem: 3M says it generally takes 2 to 6 years for the energy savings to pay back the initial investment. However, in situations like mine where there is uncertainty over how long the company will remain in the building and where there are a lot of windows, the return on investment will be critical.

We have had an initial assessment done for the buildings at my site, and I am eagerly awaiting the results. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on similar analyses for other options. As for most issues related to environmental sustainability, we will need to integrate several approaches to reducing our energy use if we want to be successful.

There are increasing rebates and tax incentives available to help defray the cost of window film; The Tax Incentives Assistance Project and the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency are good places to start. Window film vendors – including 3M, Clear-Wall, Vista Window Film, and Llumar – also have information available. Please note: this is informational only and not meant to be comprehensive or seen as a recommendation of services.

This content is cross-posted at GreenBiz.com

From San Jose to Houston to Philadelphia, the media is taking notice of this year’s Climate Corps fellows.  Check out these profiles:

• Sarah Shapiro’s work at Cisco, as reported in the San Jose Mercury News;
• Lindsay McCombs, David Fox and Sahil Thaker’s efforts to save energy and money in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, from The News & Observer;
• Ryan Whisnant’s top-down and bottom-up work with SunGard and Andrea Sandor and Christopher Anderson’s work with Ahold USA companies Stop & Shop and Giant Food as chronicled by the Philadelphia Inquirer; and
• Carin Giga’s efforts to help Houston’s Toyota Center identify and rectify inefficiencies in this Q&A with the Houston Chronicle.

And some other commentary on the program:

• Interns opt for new markets, Financial Times
• Majoring in Energy Efficiency, San Francisco Chronicle
• Planting green moles in corporate America, Grist
• Climate Corps MBA program more than triples to 23 firms, Environmental Leader
• Climate Corps program cuts business costs and improves efficiency, GreenBiz

With falling asset values and limited access to capital, many in the real estate industry are spending their time on the next best thing to doing deals: going green. Not only do energy and water efficient buildings have relatively low operating costs, Asset Managers report that these buildings also have high occupancy rates, quick space absorption and proud tenants.

As a Climate Corps Intern, I am working with Grubb Properties to identify and evaluate energy efficiency improvements for their portfolio of commercial and multi-family real estate in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C. In addition to working with existing buildings, I have been working with the development team to create efficiency guidelines for new construction.  I have helped internal committees establish company sustainability practices and evaluate the feasibility of using renewable energy to light buildings.

Last week, I attended the Urban Land Institute’s Investing and Developing Green conference to get a better sense of where the real estate industry is heading and the best ways to get involved with the green movement.

While there is still great uncertainty as to how “green” will play out in the real estate industry, one similarity among the conference, the Climate Corps Fellowship training and my experience at Grubb Properties is the trend towards monitoring building performance, reporting that information publicly and including energy efficiency as part of on-going, preventative maintenance.

Monitoring
Whether it is through a simple spreadsheet or complex energy management software, more and more building managers are beginning to monitor their building’s annual resource consumption. The EPA’s free online Energy Star Portfolio Manager is popular with institutional investors because it enables managers to enter data about existing buildings – office, retail and even multifamily – and benchmark their performance against similar and competing buildings. This program adjusts for climate, energy costs, building size and even occupancy rates so that managers can track their building’s progress over time.

Although energy and water can account for between 20% and 30% of a building’s operating cost, many building managers lack a system to quantify how resource consumption has changed over time, even after making relatively simple investments in lighting and bathroom fixture upgrades. But, as retrofits get more complicated and expensive, owners (and buyers, too) will want to know just how their investment in HVAC or lighting controls is paying off in terms of lower operating costs and higher building values. If building managers start monitoring electric, gas and water consumption today, they will be able to quantify the savings and added value tomorrow.

Reporting
According to a source at the ULI conference, only about one-third of existing buildings could ever achieve LEED certification – but that does not mean an existing building cannot run efficiently. The Energy Star Portfolio Manager and its benchmarking process  allows building managers to identify and resolve systematic problems, start tracking investments in energy efficiency and support a marketing platform to attract new tenants and excite existing tenants and employees who may be interested in “green” space.

In Europe, all buildings are now rated in terms of resource efficiency and now display, or soon will, those ratings, much like a health inspector’s certificate, for tenants and visitors to see. This may soon become standard practice in the Unites States, as well. Building owners who start benchmarking and reporting energy consumption now will have a much easier time – and likely more favorable scores – by the time they have to actually start reporting that information to the public.

Ongoing Maintenance
When buildings are designed to meet standards for energy efficiency and other environmental attributes, trusting owners and managers assume buildings will perform as designed – and continue to do so in perpetuity. However, this is generally not the case. Engineers, developers and property managers at the ULI conference claimed that in most cases, “commissioning” – the process which is required for LEED certification when a third party evaluates and verifies whole building performance – more than pays for itself by discovering costly inefficiencies due to poor installation or simple wear and tear. This type of thorough, systematic, unbiased assessment will add years of life to any building – LEED certified or not.

While most existing buildings will never qualify for LEED certification because of inherent design characteristics, that doesn't mean they can't run more efficiently. By tracking a building’s energy and water use performance, building managers can monitor the effectiveness of programs, compare one building to its competitors, quantify and communicate progress with tenants and keep occupancy levels high, so that any building is run as an efficient, green machine!

This content is cross-posted on GreenBiz.com.