Yardi Energy focuses on energy management and sustainability for real estate, including commercial, retail and residential buildings. Yardi offers several products as part of the Yardi Smart Energy Suite, most of which are built into Yardi Voyager property management software, offering its clients a unique experience utilizing a single stack of products to effectively manage assets, analyze energy costs and deliver energy savings. Yardi Utility Billing and YardiUtility Expense Management helps with the recovery of utility costs from residents and vacant units, and automates paperless utility payables processing. Yardi LOBOS and Proliphix includes HVAC energy optimization software for commercial and retail buildings. Pulse Energy provides real-time energy data aggregated by a built-in algorithm for visibility into energy load to manage energy use, performance, and occupant engagement. Yardi PowerShopping energy procurement services leverage energy management and risk management strategies to negotiate competitively priced electricity, gas, oil and green energy sources on behalf of property operators. We sat down with Martin Levkus, Director at Yardi Energy, to learn more about the energy initiatives he’s seeing in the multifamily sector. Executive Summary Yardi Energy works with both commercial and multifamily buildings, which has provided Levkus with an interesting perspective on sustainability in the real estate space. He says the multifamily sector lags behind the commercial sector when it comes to sustainability due to a difference in who pays the bills (residents in the multifamily sector versus property owners in the commercial sector) and a lack of quantifiable whole-building data in the multifamily sector. Still, Levkus has seen sustainability in the multifamily sector go through three phases of evolution. First was the submetering units to make residents directly responsible for consumption costs, second was educating residents on how to lower their consumption and third entailed views of whole building data to measure performance and compare buildings for energy trending, benchmarking and most recently tracking ENERGY STAR scores. Levkus also believes that we have reached a turning point when it comes to sustainability in the multifamily sector. More states are mandating energy benchmarking, and we have a new generation of environmentally conscious renters. Together, these factors make energy efficiency improvements more compelling. Against this backdrop, however, multifamily building managers must collect more energy data and make better use of it to improve visibility into consumption and help determine the impact retrofits will have on performance. Fortunately, says Levkus, there is plenty of innovative technology available to help. Specifically, he points to Internet of Things devices like smart thermostats that can make regulating energy consumption smarter and easier for residents and property owners alike. He also cites the value of new meters that can provide real-time visibility into utility data to help buildings proactively identify and correct any issues as they happen. Success comes down to making all of these factors — better data, new technology, improved visibility and resident participation — come together. Levkus contends: “Improving visibility into data and introducing Internet of Things technology will help property owners be more successful with energy initiatives in the multifamily market, but they can’t do it alone. Property owners can’t be successful in achieving any major energy goals or savings in the multifamily market if they don’t engage their residents. If you have a 200 unit building, your common area counts as probably 10-15% of the energy bill. The rest is in the hands of your residents, so if you don’t engage them with any sustainability projects, you’re not going to be able to succeed because they control 90% of the costs.” Want to read more? Download The Next Frontier for Energy Efficiency: “Greening” the Multifamily Sector now.   What are some of the reasons why your clients seek out Yardi Energy’s services? Martin Levkus: Our customers look to our expertise to help them manage their energy and reduce their operating costs. Also, they use our Voyager property management platform as a “single stack” business solution....