While energy efficiency is important every day of the year in any economy, 2020 is presenting unique challenges along with big opportunities for companies and individuals alike and now is a great time for everyone to take control of energy use and utility costs. Using energy efficiently is the simplest way to lower utility bills, improve air quality and reduce environmental impact as part of a larger concerted effort. Driven by the mission to save money, cut pollution and create jobs, Energy Efficiency Day on October 7, 2020, is a collaboration of dozens of energy efficiency advocacy groups around the U.S., including the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Advanced Energy Economy, Alliance to Save Energy, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Regional Energy Efficiency Organizations and many others. As we come together for the fifth annual Energy Efficiency Day, the event website offers some great tips to deal with pandemic-related utility costs now and through the summer. A costly lockdown While working remotely and spending more time at home is helping to stop the spread of COVID-19, it’s not helping most people’s wallets. For areas in a home that need improvement to increase energy efficiency, workers usually need inside access. During a pandemic, that kind of exposure carries serious safety concerns. If you’re not ready to let utility pros into your home, what can you do? Consider a virtual energy audit. Check with your local utility companies to find out if they offer this convenience in your area. There are also some things you can do yourself to increase energy efficiency and stop the waste. Following are a few highlights and takeaways from the article Pandemic Hurts Efficiency Jobs But You Can Still Make Energy-Saving Upgrades. Seal the gaps Check around windows and doors as well as mail slots, electrical outlets and window-mounted AC units. Wherever you find a crack or gap, seal it with caulk or weather stripping. Replace filters Keeping your furnace and air conditioner filter clean will ensure they aren’t working harder than they need to — which saves you money, lowers emissions and extends the life of your equipment. Lighten up your bills Switch your bulbs to LEDs, which use up to 90% less energy to deliver the same amount of light as incandescent bulbs — and they last up to 25 times longer. Save water With a high efficiency showerhead, you can save more the 2,000 gallons of water per year, most of which is hot water, so you also get the savings on heating. While you’re at it, install an aerator in your kitchen sink — a pressure compensating model ensures plenty of flow power while it reduces water use. Want to learn more? Get the scoop on ways to save on your next energy bill for tips including ENERGY STAR® appliances and how you can take part in Energy Efficiency Day. For property managers and owners looking for ways to gain control over energy consumption and reduce costs, join a free webinar on energy solutions brought to you by Yardi, named an ENERGY STAR Partner of the...

Class A commercial buildings get all the fanfare. They have the nicest amenities, the best views and, of course, the highest rent. But let’s not overlook the value that class B and C spaces bring to communities and business owners. Often located in suburban areas or lacking glamour that high rises provide, these buildings still possess many advantages and simply don’t get the same type of recognition. A recent ENERGY STAR® report stated that 94% of all U.S. commercial buildings were properties under 50,000 square feet. Because class B and C buildings significantly outnumber class A, they can lead the way in contributing to a cleaner environment, improved leasing practices and cost savings techniques. At the recent 2020 Virtual BOMA Conference, Marta Schantz, senior vice president of Urban Land Institute (ULI), explained three major challenges for class B and C owners in regard to energy efficiency: Information constraints – Stakeholders are so consumed with day to day operations that energy efficiency gets put on the backburner. Lean on your property manager for data and best practices and educate yourself about building benchmarks to understand what’s working or not. Resource constraints – These buildings don’t have the budget or staff size of class As, so they often lack someone specifically assigned to energy projects, or a third party hired to oversee this aspect of the portfolio. Funding constraints – B and C class buildings typically don’t have capital planning funds to invest in larger retrofits with up-front costs. Owners also may not be able to take on long-term debt. How can a building owner overcome some of these challenges? Primarily, there are financing options available so that B and C owners can reach long term savings goals: cost recovery in terms of lease forms, utility on-bill financing, commercial property assessed clean energy financing (C-PACE), among others. As Schantz explained, an HVAC retrofit alone may not provide the necessary ROI, but bundled with LED installation or sensor installation, it can provide long-term savings with a relatively short-term payback process. As explained in a 2020 BOMA report, class B and C properties could save 15% on energy costs with basic low- to no-cost initiatives, or even up to 35% with the larger investments detailed above. BOMA’s research has found that sustainability initiatives can reduce operating expenses for class B and C buildings between $0.26 and $0.61 per square foot and increase the net operating income for these properties between 2.4% and 5.6% per year. What are some of the simplest energy solutions to implement? According to Joey Cathcart, associate at the Rocky Mountain Institute, here are some of the best low-cost, quick payback measures for energy savings across property type: LED lighting: LEDs use significantly less energy and last much longer than incandescent lighting. Controls/Sensors: Install LED’s in high-use areas and controls or sensors in low-use areas like closets and restrooms. Programmable thermostats: Simply program your temperature setting in times of low or no occupancy. Energy audits: Establish a baseline and identify where improvements can be made. Local authorities often provide grants for these projects. Window filming or shading: Reduce demands on HVAC and reduce solar radiation with tinting or shading. Lease provisions and green leases help increase investor, owner and tenant interest. “They help to overcome split incentives, improve transparency and indicate a commitment to sustainability,” Cathcart said. He detailed three low cost components to drive the highest lease impact: Integrate new building expectations by implementing low or no cost strategies into standard operating procedures. Integrate language into leasing that includes periodic energy audits. Tenants see this as a commitment to sustainability. Document operating best practices to optimize performance in common areas and tenant spaces. “The best time to integrate provisions is either during tenant renewal or at the beginning of a new tenant lease,” Cathcart explained. Eugenia Gregorio, founder and principal at Gregorio Sustainability, presented a case study of The Tower Companies...

Yardi recently hosted a series of webinars for property owners in the U.S. and Canada facing the prospect of complying with a raft of energy, water and waste benchmarking requirements. A new statewide ordinance in California, measures in a host of municipalities and the Energy & Water Reporting and Benchmarking Regulations (EWRB) in Ontario, Canada, require measurement and public disclosure of whole building energy and/or water efficiency. All told, 49 mandatory policies to leverage ENERY STAR® plus a like number of voluntary policies requiring commercial and multifamily property owners to gather, assimilate and submit data will be on the books next year. Energy experts Randy Moss, Kimmy Seago, Ashley Nelson, Carson Spraker and Ethan Arbiser used the webinar series to illustrate the process and benefits of ENERGY STAR, the industry benchmarking standard that shows how efficiently a building performs compared to other similar buildings. Challenges often associated with benchmarking include managing multiple vendors and data request processes, compiling multiple street addresses into a whole building, obtaining owner and tenant authorizations, ensuring data quality, and properly setting up data and reporting through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager®. As an ENERGY STAR partner that has benchmarked 320 million square feet within Portfolio Manager, Yardi has energy management software and certified experts that make collecting, assimilating and reporting required information much easier for building owners. Benchmarking steps include setting up properties in Portfolio Manager, requesting whole building utility data from providers, and verifying and submitting the data. The Yardi team also tracks regulation updates and properties’ compliance status. The webinar presenters pointed out that property managers can use information loaded into ENERGY STAR for purposes beyond compliance. These include earning certifications that exempt properties from audits and recommissioning and gaining access to low-cost green financing. Benchmarking can also help attract investors, many of whom factor ENERGY STAR scores into their investment decisions. Data gathered from benchmarking also helps property managers plan and evaluate future energy conservation measures and compete in internal and external energy-saving competitions. Learn what’s ahead in American and Canadian energy regulations and learn how Yardi, which actively manages ENERGY STAR compliance for more than 2,000 commercial and multifamily properties in many jurisdictions, can help you get...

New York City’s Local Law 97, part of a package of legislation comprising the Climate Mobilization Act, was enacted in May. It’s designed to drastically reduce carbon emissions by imposing stringent carbon emission limits for most commercial properties over 25,000 square feet. Impacting more than 57,000 buildings and aiming to reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2050, the statute stands as “the most ambitious climate legislation for buildings enacted by any city in the world,” according to The Urban Green Council, a New York-based sustainability advocacy group. The law’s emissions calculations consider the total building load, not just base building energy usage. With tenants accounting for well over 50% of usage in many buildings, that means property owners should “carefully vet their business plans and be sure they are planning for this environment, since it represents a significant change for both owners and their tenants,” said James Nelson and Terri Gumula of commercial real estate company Avison Young, writing in Real Estate Weekly. Estimates of what city landlords will spend to comply with Local Law 97 run to $20 billion and up. With the first compliance period starting in 2024, that group is on the clock. Webinar offers resources Yardi energy experts Brian Fridkin and Maria Solobay recently presented a webinar hosted by Commercial Property Executive to give property managers tips on easing the transition to Local Law 97. A representative from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), a public benefit corporation that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, also spoke about programs already in place in the state. The presenters listed prescriptive conservation measures required by the new law including adjusting temperature set points, repairing heating system leaks, insulating pipes and installing timers on exhaust fans. Additional steps supporting compliance include embedding efficiency requirements in future leases, upgrading lighting and lighting sensors in tenant spaces, and friendly energy-saving competitions. However, Fridkin pointed out, “For many buildings, just completing the required measures won’t be enough to meet the emissions limits in the law.” Owners will also need to invest in optimizing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, fault detection and diagnostics, and metering equipment. Solar or wind generation installations are other options. “You can have discussions with tenants about upgrading their lighting or installing occupancy sensors in their spaces, which would reduce their monthly energy bill as well as move toward complying with the law. And you can have tenant energy competitions to see who can reduce their emissions the most. You might also work on switching out tenant HVAC units for more efficient ones or tying in a tenant’s HVAC to the building’s system,” Fridkin said. A key first step toward compliance is implementing real-time energy management (RTEM) to collect live and historical building performance data. This data helps building owners optimize the building’s energy consumption (ultimately reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and prove how the property is performing. RTEM systems can help improve ENERGY STAR® scores, a key consideration because the building types covered under Local Law 97 are already required to complete ENERGY STAR benchmarking every year under another law. Learn how Yardi technology and NYSERDA incentives support building managers who seek to leverage RTEM. Yardi is an approved vendor for NYSERDA’s RTEM program and an ENERGY STAR Partner of the...

Utility expenses are one of the biggest controllable expenses in commercial buildings. Yet an average commercial building wastes 30% of its energy consumption due to inefficiencies and lack of proper management. This highlights an opportunity to take a more proactive approach on measuring energy consumption and implementing solutions to improve how a commercial building operates. A reduction in energy consumption is good for the bottom line and is great for the environment. It is estimated that a reduction of between 25% and 30% in real estate energy emissions could in turn help the US and other nations hit the Paris Agreement targets within the next 10 years, which would be a remarkable achievement. Yardi has developed a comprehensive energy management platform for commercial and build-to-rent real estate portfolios called Yardi Pulse. We believe having a better understanding of utility and energy consumption is an important ‑ first step in developing strategies to reduce consumption and improve efficiencies in how a building operates. Our energy solutions have been available in the US, for a number of years and are currently being deployed to international markets, including the UK. Yardi solutions have traditionally been focused on servicing the back o­ffice of real estate investors, owners and operators to manage their property portfolios using Voyager – our enterprise resource planning platform. This focus on real estate has allowed us to gain a deep understanding and data set of how buildings are managed, the expenses associated with utilities and the costs associated with running the mechanical and plant operations in a building. Yardi Pulse has been created as a software-driven energy strategy that is comprehensive in terms of functionality, easy to use and provides a short payback period for clients. Yardi Pulse has three core functional modules. Utility Expense Management is crucial to understanding and documenting energy consumption in a building and across a portfolio. By leveraging machine learning to provide automated validations to ensure that utility expenses are correct, late fees, bill errors and over payments can be reduced. Detailed consumption data in turn helps provide valuable portfolio benchmarking. This granular consumption data in turn becomes the starting point to build an effective energy strategy. Energy Intelligence is the second building block, which is fuelled by real-time data being collected through Internet of Things (IoT) real-time metering devices installed in the buildings. This enables visibility to compare usage, savings and spikes between time periods across an entire portfolio to highlight outliers. This data allows clients to make incremental but powerful changes. Energy e­fficiency Energy Automation is the third building block, designed to maximize building performance with energy automation technology that prevents HVAC system problems by proactively detecting faults and providing alerts. This also allows clients to automate their heating and cooling to optimize tenant comfort and minimize wasted HVAC costs. Tackling the energy e­fficiency of a building can be daunting, as it is often difficult to understand where to start or how to calculate the benefit of an investment. We have found that an incremental strategy by focusing on first gaining visibility into consumption and demand can reduce costs by 2% to 5%. Over time, building owners and operators can identify their highest cost/highest ROI assets as candidates for energy automation. This then leads to additional cost savings exceeding 10% to 15%. We expect cost savings to increase, as we further develop artificial intelligence and machine learning engines to analyse larger data sets on consumption as well as other data points that will be collected with the deployment of additional IoT sensors in buildings. The market has also seen an increase in demand from investors and tenants for more energy efficient buildings. From an investor perspective, an energy-efficient building is one of their investment criteria. Not only does an energy-e­fficient building increase the appeal of the investor, but it also tracks higher-value tenants that rank sustainability and energy e­fficiency in their decision...

(June 27, 2019) – Yardi executives and clients brought their A game to Apartmentalize in Denver on Thursday, providing answers to pressing questions facing multifamily professionals. Read our day one recap here. The country’s preeminent apartment industry get-together continued at an energetic pace with a full day of sessions, featured speakers like actress/producer Mindy Kaling (The Office/The Mindy Project) and the NAA Expo, which opened Thursday afternoon for product demonstrations, giveaways and special interactive events. Kaling recounted her early days in New York City attempting to break into the acting and writing scene. She and her two best friends shared a railroad style apartment. Railroad style apartments have a series of connected rooms, making privacy near impossible. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but there’s one time in your life when you can share an apartment with connected rooms with your best friends, and it’s when you’re 21,” she shared. Kaling, now 40, also confided that she’d love to purchase an apartment building in New York City for her frequent work trips to the city. She couldn’t have found a more appropriate audience than 10,000 apartment managers and executives. Yardi is one of two Strategic Alliance Partners for the conference and a major contributor to the NAA Education Institute.  A video that introduced the company at Thursday’s general session can be viewed below: Thursday night, conference attendees were bused to the Denver Performing Arts Complex for an epic outdoor party that included live entertainment, a silent disco, breakdancers, caricature artists, BMX riders, a slackline performance, photo booths, and food truck fare. But before party time, Yardi executives at Apartmentalize dove in to answer critical client questions in three insightful education sessions. Top Tech Trends for Better NOI Esther Bonardi, vice president of marketing at Yardi, moderated a panel including Garin Hamburger, senior director of national property marketing for Pinnacle; and Taylor Wiederkehr, director of innovation services for BH Management Services. The group explored emerging technologies disrupting the future of rental housing. They focused on artificial intelligence, machine learning and energy efficiency, and the impact of each on business operations and resident experiences. Over the last decade, energy efficiency and utility management have become hot topics in multifamily. For both NOI and the planet, “it’s a good chance for our industry to make an impact,” said Bonardi. In today’s technology-focused world, how can multifamily professionals tackle energy spend? Bonardi discussed the importance of having an energy strategy. Utilizing ENERGY STAR benchmarking, implementing energy management solutions, and installing IoT-enabled devices like smart thermostats which reduce costs and energy use. “There are 17 billion IoT devices currently connected. By 2025 that will double to 34 billion,” said Hamburger. “We’ll need to have it in all of our communities because it will be the norm.” Providing a basic IoT package – a smart hub, connected thermostat and upgraded outlets – has been beneficial for Pinnacle. The national multifamily housing provider has seen higher profits and been able to raise rents at IoT-enhanced properties. Hamburger shared that featured like self-guided tours and artificial intelligence for lead nurturing have resulted in cost savings and staff efficiency. BH Management Services has fully embraced the Internet of Things. At property refurbishments, the firm has installed smart home systems across its portfolio, capitalizing on control and convenience for residents. A self-proclaimed former skeptic of IoT-connected living, Wiederkehr advised that “IoT will be the foundation for the future of multifamily.” Resilience, Climate Change and Energy Use A panel moderated by Martin Levkus, regional director of sales for Yardi, focused on the threat of continued climate change and strategies for both reducing energy use and preparing for climate challenges ahead. Speakers Deb Cloutier, president of RE Tech Advisors, and Cindy Zhu, fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy, brought exceptional insight to the topic. “In the past, resilience and climate change hasn’t been a focus of conversation. Real estate...

Real-Time Energy Management (RTEM) systems continuously collect live and historical building performance data through a cloud-based system. Building owners can use this data to optimize the building’s energy consumption and show in real time how the property is performing. By reducing energy consumption, RTEM systems also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a building’s overall carbon footprint. This is particularly important to New York state property owners who, with the help of partners like Yardi, can qualify for incentives from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), a public benefit corporation that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, when they install RTEM systems. Annette Durnack, regional director for Yardi Energy, explains how Yardi fits in with RTEM systems and NYSERDA. Q: What are the benefits of an RTEM system? Durnack: RTEM systems help building owners and operators manage energy consumption, so they can operate their buildings more efficiently and reduce energy consumption. They centralize energy usage tracking; monitor heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems; and manage the scheduling and operation of building equipment. They detect equipment faults, so they can be addressed before they become failures or impact tenant comfort. They also help track the effect of energy conservation measures. RTEM systems can help improve ENERGY STAR® scores and contribute to LEED certifications. In the state of New York, properties that install an RTEM system through qualified vendors such as Yardi may be eligible for significant incentive funding through NYSERDA. Q: What kinds of RTEM incentives does NYSERDA offer building owners? Durnack: The NYSERDA RTEM program provides up to $300,000 per electric utility account via a 30 percent cost-share for projects submitted by qualified RTEM vendors. NYSERDA provides funding for the installation of RTEM hardware as well as the provision of software and ongoing services. Additional funding may be available for projects that demonstrate the integration of multiple interoperable systems or include a commercial tenant in the project scope. Q: How can Yardi help building owners obtain these NYSERDA incentives? Durnack: Yardi is an approved vendor for NYSERDA’s RTEM program, giving building owners the option of employing the Yardi Pulse Suite to improve their building’s performance and to qualify for RTEM project funding. Yardi submits all required project documentation to NYSERDA in order to qualify and secure the incentive. Once approval is obtained, Yardi offers a turnkey solution for installing and servicing an RTEM system. Q: What benefits can building owners expect from the Yardi Pulse Suite? Durnack: Our Pulse Suite includes several energy management software solutions that can help reduce your energy costs and consumption. Most Yardi clients experience HVAC energy savings in the range of 10-15 percent. Yardi Utility Expense Management, for example, provides access to all energy cost and consumption data, enabling emission calculations and contributing to benchmarking for ENERGY STAR® reporting. Yardi Pulse Real-Time Metering delivers visibility into real-time demand and consumption that can be used change how a building operates. Yardi Pulse Active EE optimizes HVAC system performance by making incremental changes to set points every 30 seconds, which reduces consumption while maintaining tenant comfort. Yardi Pulse Fault Detection and Diagnostics helps prevent HVAC system equipment failures before they cost money or impact tenant comfort. We also offer emission calculations consulting, renewable energy credit purchasing, and energy procurement services. Our Yardi energy experts can help you select the right solutions that will best meet your needs. Click here for more information on NYSERDA’s RTEM program. Download a Yardi Pulse brochure for more information on energy management software...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s designation of Yardi as a 2019 ENERGY STAR® Award recipient in the service and product provider category was previously announced in this space. The award recognizes the company’s outstanding contributions to protecting the environment through superior energy efficiency achievements. More than 180 organizations across a broad swath of industries joined Yardi in receiving ENERGY STAR awards in April. Some of their achievements that ENERGY STAR documented are summarized below. Along with saving more than 5.6 million kilowatt-hours from LED retrofit and solar programs, Chicago apartment community developer and manager AMLI Residential engaged its leasing staff to educate residents and prospective residents on the benefits of living in an ENERGY STAR-certified community. Boston Properties incorporated cost recovery for ENERGY STAR certification, sub-metering of high-intensity tenant equipment and tenant energy disclosure through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager® into its master lease form. The self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust also achieved ENERGY STAR certification for 77 properties in 2018. Bozzuto Management Company of Greenbelt, Md., pursued 100% benchmarking in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager for all managed assets and achieved energy reductions of more than 3% and 2% in site and source energy usage, respectively, across its portfolio in 2017, which equates to a calculated energy cost savings of more than $4 million. The manager of more than 255 multifamily communities also communicates sustainability and ENERGY STAR issues through its internal Bozzuto in the Know program. CommonWealth Partners, a Los Angeles private real estate investment, development, management and operating company, developed an internal Battle of the Buildings Bootcamp competition that focused on empowering properties to reduce energy, water and waste over three months. The effort saved more than 12,000 megawatt-hours of energy, 16,000 kilogallons of water and more than 3,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Fairfax (Va.) County Public Schools, which serves more than 190,000 students, has saved more than $23 million since 2014 through a comprehensive energy program. The 10th largest school division in the U.S. also enacted student-conducted home energy audits, a Battle of the Buildings competition and extensive promotion of ENERGY STAR and energy efficiency through social media. Hudson Pacific Properties, a vertically integrated real estate company in Los Angeles, implemented an engagement and recognition program that recognized properties that achieved the largest ENERGY STAR score improvement, hosted the best tenant engagement event and demonstrated the largest reductions in energy, water and waste usage. Los Angeles-based Kilroy Realty Corporation received ENERGY STAR Charter Tenant recognition for one of its offices and promoted ENERGY STAR in an innovative TEDx talk. It also joined the BOMA W2 challenge, an initiative built with the support of a grant from Yardi, across 84 buildings. LBA Realty LLC achieved ENERGY STAR certification for 21 properties in 2018. The Irvine, Calif. office and industrial property manager and investor also increased its average ENERGY STAR score portfolio-wide from 78 to 81 and reduced its average weather-normalized source energy use intensity by over 5% from 2017-18. Memorial Hermann Health System of Houston saved more than 14 million kilowatt hours by retrofitting light fixtures. It also became the first healthcare system in Texas to utilize new ventilation rate standards that reduce energy use while still meeting air change rates set by the department of health. Principal Real Estate Investors LLC of Des Moines, Iowa, achieved more than 3% reduction in average weather-normalized source energy use intensity from 2017-18. The company has achieved more than $52 million in cumulative avoided energy costs and more than $137 million in potential increased asset value since 2008. Defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions provider Raytheon Company designed and built an energy-efficient onsite data center that can be replicated at other sites, earning a top project award from its manufacturing peers. The Waltham, Mass.-based company also completed onsite battery storage projects at two facilities that help offset power consumption from the grid during peak periods. SL Green...

Yardi has long been proud to provide energy-related technical services to clients with the aim of improving efficiency, lowering costs and meeting sustainability benchmarks. The company gained a measure of its impact this month in the form of an ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year Award in the service and product provider category. The award signifies that Yardi demonstrates exemplary leadership, innovation and commitment to environmental protection by instituting ENERGY STAR values, tools and resources within the industry, and its own operations. Since 1992, ENERGY STAR and its partners have helped American families and businesses save more than $450 billion and over 3.5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity while also achieving broad emissions reductions. The EPA co-manages ENERGY STAR, a voluntary program that helps consumers and businesses save money and protect the environment through the adoption of energy-efficient products and practices. Past ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award recipients include familiar companies such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Northwestern University and HP Inc. “This award reflects our clients’ success in using ENERGY STAR resources to achieve their corporate and community sustainability goals. We are proud of those achievements and look forward to helping our clients and the industry gain even more benefits from ENERGY STAR,” said Anant Yardi, founder and president of Yardi. “Energy efficiency is a core component of our mission as a real estate technology provider. We thank the EPA for this high honor and will continue applying technical innovation to current and emerging industry challenges,” said Akshai Rao, vice president of energy and procurement at Yardi. Yardi’s ENERGY STAR-related initiatives in 2018 that the EPA evaluated included: Benchmarking more than a thousand buildings in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager® in 27 compliance jurisdictions every month. Yardi also benchmarked other properties in non-compliance areas for other programs Documenting its real estate clients’ success in using energy optimization software to maximize efficiency and reduce costs. One example is SL Green, New York City’s largest office landlord, which used intelligent energy optimization software from Yardi to increase the ENERGY STAR score for one of its properties from 48 to 76. SL Green also won the 2018 Earth Building of the Year Award from BOMA NY Sponsoring the BOMA Water and Waste Challenge Program, which helps property managers track, gather and analyze data. Yardi solutions supported W2 participants by automating data capture and generating insightful reports. One client, Kilroy Realty Corporation, reduced water use at a Class A building by 30% Promoting ENERGY STAR value propositions like higher occupancy and rent, increased asset values, actionable benchmarking information and favorable impressions among investors. The company did this through webinars, industry trade shows and publications, client user conferences, executive briefings, corporate blog posts and other activities Earning ENERGY STAR certification for its corporate headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif. Working with EPA to improve ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager software functionality in such areas as building energy performance measurement and reporting Yardi will receive the ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on April...

Did you know that the average commercial building wastes 30% of the energy it consumes? Or that energy costs will rise as much as 60% in areas of the U.S. by 2028? It’s true, according to an analysis and calculation of Yardi consolidated property data. These facts should be red flags for property management companies without an energy strategy in place. Luckily, adopting an energy strategy is not as daunting as it may seem. In fact, taking incremental steps towards a comprehensive strategy can generate measurable savings in a matter of weeks with a relatively modest investment. Here are five reasons why an energy strategy is good business: Reduced costs Operating expenses such as utilities and maintenance are easy first targets for reduction through an energy strategy. By taking advantage of usage data and trends, property managers can quickly identify excessive usage, lower maintenance costs and identify benchmarks for energy consumption across a portfolio of properties. Increased value Assets that cost less to operate and generate higher rents quickly become more valuable. An energy strategy promotes both savings and revenue by reducing operating costs, reducing the need for rental concessions, making properties more marketable and, as a result, increasing potential net operating income. Efficient accounting The benefits of automating property management processes such as payment processing, procurement, vendor management, etc., are now viable for energy management. Gone are the days of a stack of paper utility bills waiting to be opened and paid. Automated utility expense management sends digital invoices to accounting staff and mines data from smart metering equipment to validate usage. With a relatively low upfront investment, property managers can reduce duplicate payments, avoid late fees and be confident that their utility spend is accurate. Happy tenants Doing business in a building that is LEED certified or meets ENERGY STAR® benchmarks can make a tenant feel proud, comfortable and socially responsible. They’re also less likely to call for maintenance with modern, energy efficient equipment servicing their building. That satisfaction reduces tenant turnover and increases competition for your space. Happy investors A successful energy strategy demonstrates to investors that your organization is proactively maximizing occupancy and revenue, and minimizing operating expenses. It’s also a great way to reassure investors that your properties are working to achieve local, state and federal government energy conservation goals, as well as boosting Environmental, Social and Governance scores for socially conscious investors. Need help getting started? Start with a focus on utility expense management as an approachable first step with low upfront investment required. From there, you may take bigger steps, such as energy intelligence at the property level with real time metering, ENERGY STAR benchmarking and prescriptive alerts for any property in your portfolio. The next level of investment is characterized by advanced energy automation in HVAC equipment, fault detection, diagnostics and demand management. No matter which level of strategy you take, the potential return on investment is tangible and may be evident as soon as your next utility invoice. Yardi Pulse clients have seen as much as 5% annual savings in energy costs with the first two incremental steps alone (utility expense management and energy intelligence). Annual energy savings of up to 15% or more are expected for properties that implement further energy automation measures. If you are a current Yardi Voyager user, contact our team for a complementary consultation. We’ll do an analysis to compare your costs with benchmarks. It’s a simple way to get an idea of the potential savings that an energy strategy can deliver to your...