Category: Insights

Decarbonization Insights

6 Ways For Building Owners To Save Money

April 2, 2020

If you own and/or operate an older building, existing inefficient equipment or a lack of new-age, sustainable solutions may be unnecessarily driving up operational costs. Here are the 6 ways to make sure you’re saving money and not throwing it out the window.

1. Get Rid Of Those Fluorescent Lights

Replace all fluorescent lights with LEDs, including all parking lot lighting. Installing LEDssave up to 20% – 30% on annual operating costs.

Lighting Retrofit Case Study

2. Install Solar Already

In addition to providing a long term energy cost reduction, you’ll also utilize the available tax benefits:

  • 26% Federal Business Energy ITC (dropping to 22% in 2021 and 10% thereafter),
  • The State of CA (MACRS) accelerated depreciation, and
  • Recently added, the 100% bonus Federal tax depreciation allows eligible entities to deduct the entire allowable tax basis of the system in the first year of operation.

Taking advantage of these tax incentives reduce the owner’s tax liability and will significantly offset the cost of a Solar PV system.  These incentives can also be applied to a roof replacement if combined into one project.

Solar PVs Case Study

3. Stop Cooling An Empty Room

Replace pneumatic thermostats with digital for higher-level control and visibility. Digital thermostats allow building owners to reduce peak demand by creating schedules around when spaces are unoccupied (holidays, non-peak hours, etc.).

Thermostat Retrofit Case Study

4. Be Smarter Than The Building

An energy management system (EMS) provides real-time monitoring, energy analytics, and wireless building control. The ability to measure a building’s energy usage on a granular level allows for better management of energy consumption and “peak demand.” An EMS provides extensive energy data history, peak load notifications, detailed usage reports, and more.

Energy Management System Case Study

5. Shield Your Internal Environment

Solar window film is applied to the interior of a window in order to control solar heat absorption. The film rejects up to 79% of solar energy and 99% of harmful UV rays.  Further, the film helps reduce glare, adding to a more comfortable office environment.

Solar Window Films Case Study

6. Protect Your Expensive Equipment

EvaporCool is a dual patented technology that pre-cools outdoor air prior to flowing through the condenser coils of an HVAC system. The pre-cooled air helps reduce the amount of work that the compressor must do to cool the air flowing inside a building. By minimizing the amount of work the compressor must do, the EvaporCool system prolongs the life of HVAC units, reduces energy usage up to 30%, and saves a significant amount in energy-related costs.

Evaporcool Case Study

Before getting started with any of these cost-saving options, we suggest having your building Benchmarked.
If you’d like to learn more about any of these cost-saving options, reach out to us at [email protected] or (818) 681-5750.
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green lease
Insights

WHAT IS A GREEN LEASE & HOW TO QUALIFY FOR IT

October 4, 2018

Within typical lease structures, landlords incur capital expenses, but see none of the cost-saving benefits, when conducting an energy efficiency retrofit.  The resulting efficiency favors the tenant, who see utility costs go down. Thus, owners hesitate to invest in improving the efficiency of their buildings. This is called the “split incentive”.

But what if there was a way to provide incentives to both owners and tenants?  The solution lies in a relatively new concept called “Green Leases”, also known as energy-aligned, high-performance or energy-efficient leasing. These leases align the financial and environmental goals of the landlords and tenants to work together to save money, conserve resources and ensure the efficient operation of buildings.

WHAT IS A GREEN LEASE?

A green lease incorporates energy and cost conscious clauses that benefit both building owners and  their tenants. It is important to engage stakeholders as soon as possible and gain buy-in on the outset of the leasing process. The earlier the parties communicate their sustainability goals, the higher probability the green lease language will remain in the final lease.

With Green Leases,  landlords can adopt a  “cost recovery clause”, also known as “cost pass-through” language, to amortize and recoup capital costs for energy efficiency improvements made to the building and common areas.  This allows owners to reap significant long-term savings while complying with local and state laws.

Ordinances like the City of LA’s EBEWE,  mandate minimum levels of building efficiency, meaning retrofit costs are inevitable in order to comply.

HOW TO QUALIFY FOR A GREEN LEASE?

Green Lease Leaders*, an association of landlords, tenants, brokers, and energy experts, has developed a best practices breakdown of what should constitute a “green lease” for commercial, “high-performance” buildings.

Levels of Green Lease qualification are broken into two tiers.  

  1. Silver (Foundational)
  2. Gold (Implementation)

To reach the Silver-level, owners must demonstrate the development of foundational policies and practices that encourage reduced energy consumption in leased spaces.  Such policies and practices must include the following prerequisites, communicated in a standard lease or corporate guidelines:

  • Provide a sustainability contact to tenants (either at the Owner’s office or a third party consultant)
  • Implement a cost recovery clause for energy efficiency upgrades benefiting tenant (same as above)

The Gold-level Green Lease requires owners to implement at least five of the following practices, constituted in the lease:

  • Track common area energy use
  • Track common area water use
  • Disclose whole-building ENERGY STAR score to tenants annually
  • Ensure brokers have energy training
  • Implement landlord energy management best practices
  • Require tenants to purchase on-site renewables if offered by landlord and competitively priced
  • Meter tenant spaces that are greater than 5,000 sf
  • Request annual tenant energy disclosure
  • Request minimum energy efficiency fit-out for tenants
  • Demonstrate innovation in leasing

Owners with existing leases not imminently up for renewal can still qualify and be recognized for a Green Lease policy so long as such Green Lease requirements are met in all negotiations going forward.

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Benefits Of Energy Benchmarking
Benchmarking Insights

4 Benefits Of Energy Benchmarking

October 3, 2018

Energy Benchmarking measures and reports the energy performance of a given building, ensuring compliance with local and state laws.  It also allows for performance comparisons to other benchmarked buildings of a similar size, occupancy and climate.

1. COMPLIANCE

Benchmarking via the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager software is required by both city and state-wide legislature. Cities such as, Los Angeles (EBEWE), San Francisco, and Berkeley have all enacted ordinances requiring commercial and multi-family buildings to conduct an energy audit and report their annual energy usage. Most recently, the State of California has renewed a new energy disclosure law, AB 802, formerly known as AB 1103, requiring annual energy disclosure.

2. COST REDUCTION

Research shows that commercial buildings waste 30% of their energy. Building energy benchmarking empowers its owners by revealing crucial energy use data, pinpointing areas of potential efficiency improvement and cost savings. Such transparency allows owners to remain competitive and to take specific action to increase the longevity of building systems.

Owners who have benchmarked their buildings are more inclined to focus on energy efficiency and have consistently reduced their energy use by an average of 2.4% per year.

3. COMPARISON

Benchmarking is available for 21 different types of facilities and produces an Energy Star Score between 1 and 100, with 100 being the most energy efficiency. The process also calculates the Site and Source Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of the building and compares it against the National Median of CBECS data*. When comparing these scores against similar building types/uses in the software, building owners begin to understand how this performance stands in regards to energy and water efficiency. Owners can take specific steps to mitigate energy shortfalls and improve efficiency, resulting in a higher net operating income.

*  Also known as Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey using 2012 survey data.

4. SMARTER DECISION-MAKING

In addition to supplying current snapshots of a building’s energy use, energy benchmarking yields data on past use as well, giving light to patterns of use over time.

Such a window grants owners the viewpoint to make smarter decisions about energy efficiency solutions and energy management and to optimize capital investments into energy-efficient technologies going forward.

Consistent energy benchmarking provides valuable insight as to the building’s performance over time which provides data for decision-making.

SUPPORT

Getting started with benchmarking can often be the biggest hurdle.

Contact Green EconoME to begin the benchmarking process, or to find out more. We have benchmarked over 1400 buildings.

 

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