Office Properties

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Page 18 — Office Properties Quarterly — July 2015
Sustainability
N ow is the best time to imple-
ment energy-efficiency and
sustainable practices for your
office building.The return on
investment has never been
better. Energy efficiency remains the
easiest and single most cost-effective
way to cut energy use for tenants
or owner-occupied office buildings.
Research shows that more efficient
buildings have higher occupancy rates
and increased asset value compared
with typical buildings.Tenants want
real estate with lower utility bills, and
more and more organizations are
implementing leasing policies mandat-
ing environmentally friendly space.
What’s more, consumers and employ-
ees report a desire to affiliate with
organizations they perceive to be envi-
ronmentally responsible.
Whether the building is owner
occupied or tenant occupied, energy-
efficient upgrades make a significant
impact on utility bills. But the intan-
gible benefits also speak persuasively
as studies document that employee
productivity increases and mainte-
nance and facility management duties
are reduced.With the right monitoring
system, equipment life is increased and
overall maintenance is reduced.
Before you begin any project, it's
smart to do a quick return-on-invest-
ment analysis. I recommend using a
simple modeling tool.These tools can
guide you through metrics such as pay-
back and ROI of lifecycle cost, and for
the finance arm of your management
team, it can measure the time value of
money, which is net present value and
internal rate of return.
When the financials have a short
ROI and your team buys into the con-
cept, I suggest conducting an on-site
audit – not only of
the lighting but also
other major areas
that have short ROI.
Often you will want
to assess mechanical
systems and other
energy consumers,
parsing out a quick
fix of low- and no-
cost measures to
supply your team
with a written report
that includes ener-
gy-saving recom-
mendations.
Now the fun part, you choose which
measures to implement. I suggest
starting with the items that can earn
electric or natural gas rebates, which
cover up to 60 percent of the cost of
implementation.
Lighting. The easiest first step is to
review your lighting. Energy use in
offices has risen – two-thirds of all
energy consumed in an average office
building is electricity. Lighting, office
equipment, and heating, ventilating
and air conditioning account for 90 per-
cent of this expenditure. Light-emitting
diode lighting has come a long way. I
highly suggest looking at your utility
bill and the number of lights in your
building, and then getting an estimate
to switch everything to LED. Let your
utility company write you a check for
saving it energy.The current rebates to
switch to LED are aggressive, but you
need to take advantage of this with
your utility before the program expires.
As you can see with the graph, a big
chunk of your savings will be with
lighting.
Water. Office buildings account for
much of our communities’ water use.
Office-building owners need to get bet-
ter at reducing water use because the
cost of water and wastewater services
will increase significantly.
What is the business case for sav-
ing water at your facility, and how do
you achieve this? Reducing water con-
sumption lowers the water bill as well
as all the associated costs of operating
and maintaining the equipment, and
Erin Geegan
Sharp
Principal, Zam
Energy LLC,
Boulder
Provided by U.S. EPA Energy Star Portfolio Data Trends