It was a different era in 1997, when Portland, Ore.-based New Buildings Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes energy performance improvements in commercial buildings, was founded. LEED and ENERGY STAR® buildings, Living Buildings, market adoption of renewable energy to any measurable degree—all were yet to come. “Reducing energy use was almost exclusively driven by utility efficiency programs focusing largely on fluorescent lighting upgrades,” NBI reflected recently. Today, At least 50% of customers have the option to purchase renewable electricity directly from their power supplier according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Energy conservation has become considerably more sophisticated in a report NBI recently released to coincide with the organization’s 20th anniversary. While still small in relation to total buildings and floor space, zero building development in the U.S. is accelerating, according to the report. Zero energy buildings—defined by the U.S. Department of Energy as a property or community where “on a source energy basis, the actual annual delivered energy is less than or equal to the on-site renewable exported energy”—are gaining favor across virtually all property types. The recent NBI report, “Getting to Zero Status Update and List of Zero Energy Projects,” highlights nearly 500 zero energy commercial building projects across the U.S. Projects owned by for-profit companies account for 26% of the list.  Privately held buildings account for 46% of zero energy buildings, with K-12 schools representing 18%. By contrast, NBI’s first Getting to Zero Status Update in 2012 reported just 60 commercial and multifamily buildings or projects that were either verified as zero energy or approaching that level. Zero energy buildings had the potential to grow in popularity, Greg Zimmerman, executive editor of FacilitiesNet, said in 2010, because they are “the embodiment of sustainability because net-zero is a model that is self-contained—no...

The recent World Energy Engineering Congress (WEEC) 2018 in Charlotte, N.C., addressed factors that impact an organization’s energy performance. we asked Christy Cannon, an account executive for Yardi Energy, about her experience at one of the year’s major energy conferences and technology expositions. Christy, what did you gain from the conference? Cannon: The classes are very beneficial to me because it’s a conference by and for energy managers. This is my wheelhouse! I’ve been doing energy management for almost 20 years and attending this conference for almost a decade. I’m also proud that Yardi has supported the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), presenter of the conference, for years by sending attendees and serving as a corporate sponsor. Q: Why was this year’s WEEC special for Yardi? A: This was the first time Yardi Energy had a booth at WEEC. Also, all nine of our group are certified as energy managers by AEE: Kushal Shah, Rahsan Stewart, Ray Segars, Alex Gonzalez, Arturo Perea, Ankita Gupta, Dan Rice, Dan Cordero and me. When I joined Yardi in 2012 I was the company’s only Certified Energy Manager. The addition of eight CEMs reflects Yardi’s commitment to supporting clients’ energy management and sustainability needs. Q: What were the main takeaways from the conference? A: Presenters outlined three trends to watch for in 2019. One is the evolution of blockchain, whose potential application to the energy industry includes microgrids comprising multiple buildings, each of which having their own generation, that enable peer-to-peer energy trading with no utility involvement. Generation capacity, pricing, and transaction details could be shared with everyone in the microgrid in real time. It also has potential scalability and security advantages. Q: What was the second key trend? A: The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping energy demand management....

Along with learning more about property and investment management solutions, clients used the most recent Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference (YASC) to share experiences and best practices. Representatives from Streetlane Homes, Holland Partner Group and Legacy Partners discussed in a panel session the benefits they have gained from Yardi Utility Expense Management, which receives account information and utility data directly from utility companies serving properties and generates payments to those providers. Streetlane Homes: Got their weekends back Streetlane Homes, a Roofstock company, is a leading provider of property and asset management services for single family rental home portfolios and saved more than $100,000 in overhead costs and reduced late fees by 90% within eight months of implementing Yardi Utility Expense Management in November 2017. “The solution relieved our corporate office of processing 17,000 utility invoices per month. With our previous utility service system, we had to audit every bill. That’s a lot of paperwork and manual labor that Yardi has taken off our hands,” said Teresa Taylor, vice president, finance for Streetlane Homes. “Having Yardi Voyager internal systems already in place made for a seamless transition to Yardi Utility Expense Management.” She added, “We had nine people working Saturdays and Sundays working on utility invoices. Nobody does that now. I was signing 400 checks a day. Now I have all that time back for more important tasks, and only two people are dedicated to accounts payable.” The Yardi Utility Expense Management support team also tracks and resolves service disconnections, keeping Streetlane Homes residents happy. “If there’s a late fee, Yardi calls the provider and gets it reversed,” Taylor said. Holland Partner Group: Proactive customer service Joanne Bush of Vancouver, Wash.-based property owner and manager Holland Partner Group faced workflow and invoice management issues that were...

Nearly four decades after President Carter adventurously installed solar panels on the White House, America’s energy transition away from fossil fuels has seen only modest progress. 2007 marked the first year in history when more than half of the world’s population lived in cities, and the U.N. estimated that, by 2030, urban settings will be home to nearly two thirds of the global population. However, it was just in March 2017 that monthly electricity generation from wind and solar exceeded 10% of total U.S. electricity generation for the first time. As America’s vibrant cities grow at an unprecedented pace, so does the importance of sustainable urban planning, power generation, transport systems, water and sanitation, and waste management. We set out to gauge how U.S. cities fare in terms of sustainability, and how the commercial real estate industry has embraced green building to support these efforts. We ended up with a ranking of 40 ‘sustainably powered’ U.S. cities. Read on to see how we did it and what the results show. Methodology: Our Scores, Explained For the purpose of this study, we looked at data on U.S. cities with a 100,000 population minimum, and present the 40 that achieved top scores: Arlington, Va.; Atlanta, Ga.; Austin, Texas; Baltimore, Md.; Boston, Mass.; Boulder, Colo.; Chicago, Il.; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colo.; Detroit, Mich.; Durham, N.C.; Eugene, Ore.; Hayward, Calif.; Houston, Texas; Indianapolis, Ind.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Lakewood, Colo.; Lancaster, PA; Las Vegas, NV; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Oakland, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Reno, NV; Richmond, VA; San Antonio, TX; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Savannah, GA; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO; Tucson, AZ; Washington, D.C.; Yonkers, NY. The starting point of our research was to learn how each of...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program has helped business owners and individuals save money and protect the environment through energy efficiency since 1992. Now there’s a new dimension to the program. In the fall of 2017, EPA launched the ENERGY STAR Tenant Space pilot program to promote energy efficiency in commercial tenant spaces. EPA recently recognized 48 office tenants that demonstrated commitment to energy efficiency and environmental stewardship. The award recipients met five energy efficiency criteria during the 10-month Tenant Space pilot program: estimate energy use, meter energy use, light efficiently, use efficient equipment and share data. Recipients of 2018 ENERGY STAR Charter Tenant Space Awards include Forest City Realty Trust Inc., Kilroy Realty Corp., LinkedIn and Shorenstein Realty Services LP. Some organizations, such as Cushman & Wakefield, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, JLL and JPMorgan Chase, earned recognition for multiple locations. “Adhering to sustainable best practices not only enhances our bottom line, but it also highlights our broader efforts to consistently act as a responsible corporate citizen,” Jason Kern, CEO for LaSalle Americas, said in a statement in June following the designation of LaSalle’s corporate headquarters in Chicago as a Charter Tenant Space Award recipient. Along with verifying its electricity meters, LaSalle estimated the office’s energy consumption using an online tool developed by EPA with analytical support from the U.S. Department of Energy. The company documented its nearly 100% LED lighting fixtures, daylighting/occupancy sensors and nearly 100% ENERGY STAR certified equipment and appliances. LaSalle also established an ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager account to measure energy and water consumption. The voluntary Tenant Space program was created by the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015, which encourages owners and tenants to implement high-performance energy efficiency measures in commercial buildings. EPA continues to analyze the...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR® score gives building owners a snapshot of their property’s energy performance by comparing it to a database of similar buildings. Performance metrics in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager®, an online tool for tracking energy and water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, changed on Aug. 26 to reflect the most recent market data available. This update is part of EPA’s standard process to “keep ENERGY STAR metrics as current as possible, and reflective of current market performance,” the agency says. The revised ENERGY STAR criteria incorporate the most recent Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), which constitutes the baseline against which owners compare their buildings to earn certification. In short, the change is an effort to make sure that the “similar building” comparisons for performance are as accurate as possible. EPA continues, “The most recent market data available shows an overall improvement in the energy performance of the U.S. building stock in recent years. So when Portfolio Manager metrics are updated on August 26, ENERGY STAR scores and other performance metrics will, on average, go down.” The new calculations “will be applied across all time periods, which means scores and metrics for all historical benchmarking data will change. By applying this update across all time periods, you’ll continue to be able to analyze changes that are a result of your own activities, rather than changes in underlying market data.” “The change is significant for buildings pursuing LEED or Green Globes certification, for buildings with GSA or other government space leases tied to an ENERGY STAR score of 75, for buildings in cities with mandatory benchmarking, and for the more than 450,000 commercial properties that have an ENERGY STAR score,” says Baltimore environmental attorney Stuart Kaplow, publisher of a green...

Though energy storage is a relatively new addition to the property operations toolkit, it offers vast potential. Battery systems have demonstrated multiple ways to enhance sustainability, cut costs and supply reliability. A key tactic is load shifting, the process of obtaining power during off-peak hours and storing it for use during costlier peak hours, noted Elliotte Quinn, an energy and construction attorney with Charleston, S.C.-based law firm Parker Poe. Batteries offer an alternative backup strategy to diesel generators, and can store solar power for use at night or on overcast days, Quinn noted. Earlier this year, The Irvine Co. launched a multi-property storage strategy at 21 office towers in Orange County, Calif. When requested by local utility Southern California Edison, the buildings switch their power source from the grid to a storage system that’s powered by Tesla batteries (pictured above). The office portfolio becomes a “virtual power plant that can be used to take the load off the grid instantaneously,” explained Susan Kennedy, CEO of San Francisco-based Advanced Microgrid Solutions, the system’s designer and manager. Shifting to battery power reduces the load by 10 megawatts for as long as four hours to help SCE balance the grid. Wholesale Changes An order issued this year by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should make it easier for property owners to sell energy into the wholesale market, but there is a hitch. “If you do that, you’re making yourself subject to federal regulation,” said Quinn. Wholesale selling is likely to be the purview of larger owners, he predicted. As is generally the case with newer technology, battery storage remains a work in progress. By most estimates, costs are dropping, yet the difficulty of predicting payback periods presents a challenge for owners that need to make a multimillion-dollar...

In July, parts of the U.S. saw record demand for electricity, driven by higher temperatures pushing up power usage. Pennsylvania-based regional transmission organization PJM Interconnection LLC reported 144,557 megawatts of demand on July 3, the highest level in almost two years. Power usage in New York City reached its highest level since 2013 the previous day, July 2. On the other coast, more than 80,000 Southern California residents lost power on the July 7-8 weekend as a heat wave caused problems with distribution system equipment. Meanwhile, ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, expects to set a new peak demand record this summer. Resource capacity should allow the grid to operate reliably, but unexpected outages to major generators could prompt demand-side management measures, including potential emergency load shedding. Strain on the grid has obvious implications for property managers, since the residential and commercial sectors account for about 39% of total U.S. energy consumption and more than two-thirds of the electricity used nationwide. Summer heat and havoc it wreaks on the power grid is one reason many property owners seek to incorporate energy efficiency as a core business tenet. One resource in that effort is the Green Lease Leaders program, which encourages lease terms that give both landlords and tenants a stake in adopting building efficiency practices and investments. The Institute for Market Transformation, which administers the Green Lease Leaders program with the U.S. Energy Department’s Better Buildings Alliance, estimates that green leasing could help reduce utility bills by up to $0.51 per square foot (22%) in U.S. office buildings alone; if all leased office buildings executed green leases, the market could achieve over $3 billion in annual energy costs savings. In June, IMT and Better Buildings Alliance recognized companies that incorporated innovative energy...

Intense climate and weather-related events, such as hurricanes, hail and ice, heat and wind and inland flooding, are occurring around the world with alarming intensity. Three hurricanes in 2017 alone caused a combined $300 billion in damages. About 5 million people in the U.S. are within 4 feet of a local high-tide level. A United Nations report in 2016 noted that climate-related events could place real estate assets valued at $35 trillion at risk by 2070—about half of today’s global assets under management in any industry sector. By one estimate, a sea level rise of six feet would imperil U.S. coastal properties worth about $900 billion. How can real estate asset managers prepare for what could be an inevitable rise in sea levels and other manifestations of climate change? “Asset managers and investors already have access to energy efficiency data from providers like Yardi. Now they need project-level natural hazard data that includes climate change projections. This is something the climate resilience field is working on, with a variety of firm jockeying to be first with the rollout of their proprietary software,” says Joyce Coffee, president of Climate Resilience Consulting and a senior sustainability fellow at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability. Some cities, such as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are countering weather damage risk by building flood control systems. Other metros, like Philadelphia, Detroit and Washington, D.C., have increased sewage fees, spurring building owners to consider adopting more stringent water conservation efforts. Many other officials and private citizens, of course, focus their efforts on identifying and mitigating sources of climate change. Real estate investors, for their part, are incorporating climate risk into their analysis and avoiding risky investments. A whitepaper released by BlackRock in 2016 noted, “Investors can no longer ignore climate change....

A recent report presented by Better Buildings®, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), an association dedicated to assessing and improving the sustainability performance of real estate assets, offered insight into the impact of sustainability certifications on commercial properties’ business performance in Los Angeles. David Hodgins, executive director of Los Angeles Better Buildings Challenge, presented findings showing that Class B buildings in Los Angeles with ENERGY STAR scores of 75+ achieved significantly higher occupancy rates and rent per square foot than non-certified Class A buildings there. Better Buildings’ findings were based on data from 263 ENERGY STAR-certified buildings and 526 LEED Certified buildings that illustrated the impact of ENERGY STAR benchmarking and certification on building occupancy and rental income. Co-presenter Dan Winters, head of Americas at GRESB, indicated the numbers are similar in other cities where studies have been done. Among the other Los Angeles findings: The average occupancy for ENERY STAR-certified buildings is 90%, vs the 84% current overall occupancy rate, which generates substantial gross annual rent increases The gross current asking rent per square foot (PSF) for ENERGY STAR buildings is $2.15, vs the current asking rent of $2 which also generates substantial gross annual rent improvements Los Angeles is benchmarking its most energy-intensive facilities and has pledged to reduce the energy intensity for 30 million square feet of city-owned and private buildings by 20% by 2020. More than 25 owners of large commercial buildings joined the challenge and report their results annually to help others save money and energy. The Los Angeles Existing Buildings Energy and Water Efficiency ordinance (EBEWE) has made energy efficiency a high priority in the city. This focus is paying off in multiple ways. The city ranked No. 1...

Solar power installations marked a new high in 2016. The U.S. now has 42 gigawatts of solar photovoltaic energy capacity, sufficient to power 8.3 million homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 52.3 million metric tons annually. The solar capacity grew by 55 percent year-over-year, according to an analysis released by Environment America Research and Policy Center. The report, “Shining Cities: How Smart Local Policies Are Expanding Solar Power in America,” shows that the top five positions are occupied by San Diego, Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Jose and Phoenix. An impressive number of American citizens have invested in their own solar projects in their communities, while many more are ready to enroll. In 2016, just the top 20 cities accounted for as much solar power capacity as the entire country had installed in 2010, nearly 2 gigawatts. There is also a new number one solar-powered city, San Diego, which is replacing Los Angeles. But even though the industry marked such great progress last year, there are still vast amounts of untapped solar potential. San Diego, for instance, has developed less than 14 percent of its technical potential for solar energy on small buildings. “San Diego is setting the standard for other cities across the country when it comes to protecting our environment and creating a cleaner future,” San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said. “This new ranking is a testament to the many San Diego residents and businesses harnessing our natural resources as we march toward our goal of using 100 percent renewable energy throughout the city.” In order to shift the U.S. toward an economy powered by 100 percent renewable energy, officials must continue to adopt a series of pro-solar policies. “Cities are recognizing that clean, local and affordable energy just makes sense,” said...