From California to New York, young property professionals are focused on initiatives that serve as sustainability and energy efficiency benchmarks for commercial real estate. From LEED certification to onsite composting and thermostat conversions, these professionals are setting the stage for the future with leading edge energy efficiency and sustainability projects.
Want to know what the next five-to-ten years has in store? Keep reading. These four up-and-coming industry leaders offer words of wisdom, discuss green project successes and failures, and give insight into their current high-performance projects …
Eric Duchon
Manager, Sustainability Strategies
Cushman & Wakefield
New York
Eric Duchon just finished taking one of his corporate clients through the LEED-Existing Building Operations and Maintenance (EB O&M) process. “They went from being ineligible (refrigerant still in the building and toilets that didn’t even meet universal plumbing code) to being eligible in eight months,” says Duchon, who is also working on an LED retrofit for a building in New York, bringing the payback down from two years to one year with a NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) incentive.
“I don’t like to put general terms around paybacks because each owner has his or her own requirements,” he says. “But, other than major capital upgrade projects that are necessary, I generally don’t recommend low-cost improvement projects with a payback longer than three years.”
Duchon advises facilities professionals to be creative when it comes to financing. “Off-balance-sheet financing that turns into an operating expense vs. a capital expense,” Duchon explains as one option, “or managed energy service agreements with ESCO financing … there are several options.”
Based on his experiences, financial roadblocks aren’t always what get in the way of project success; sometimes lack of understanding can be a project’s biggest failure. For example, Duchon has seen some of his clients view an ENERGY STAR® rating of 85 or 90 and assume they’re doing extremely well with energy use. But if they’re in submetered space, that number doesn’t incorporate main building systems like HVAC, says Duchon, it contains lighting and plug load data. Making sure clients understand those numbers and the implications behind them can be a difficult process. “They see a high number, and it looks good to them. But getting past the ratings and focusing on what’s really going on can be a challenge.”
To get clients involved, it helps to show them something small they can do to make a difference and realize they have ownership, says Duchon. “Without me having to say much, they figure out that lighting affects HVAC and load factor, and then they’re the ones who decide they want to do an energy audit vs. me telling them.”
Education is the best way to increase awareness and get everyone focused, he says. Cushman & Wakefield runs an annual LEED credential training program that lays out information like a comprehensive sustainability roadmap. It’s featured live and then made available all year long via a recording.
Melissa Jones
Project Manager, Sustainability Programs
CB Richard Ellis
Kansas City
Melissa Jones works almost exclusively on projects for buildings pursuing LEED-EB O&M certification in areas of water efficiency, IAQ, energy auditing, integrated pest management and waste reduction. She also performs site visits and facilitates client discussions. Based on the information she discovers, she shares a gap analysis that outlines where the client is now and where they need to be for LEED certification (and the cost of getting there).
“When I’m asking the client to spend money, I focus on areas where they will see quick payback,” she says. To her, the ultimate benefits of LEED-EB O&M certification are increased resale value and the potential for higher lease rates. Preliminary studies show that LEED-EB O&M buildings sell for more and obtain slightly higher rents than their non-certified counterparts.
Focusing on no-cost initiatives is a good way to get the ball rolling, says Jones. “It doesn’t cost money to evaluate your trash and recycling program, educate tenants or talk to your janitorial company about green cleaning.” She also recommends putting a long-term plan in place. “You can’t expect things to happen overnight. Sit down, evaluate and put a strategy in place to make incremental improvements. Start with items that have the greatest payback or are lower in cost.”
When sustainability projects don’t work out as planned, Jones says it’s not always the technology that doesn’t work; sometimes it’s the people. “Sometimes we get a contractor who says, ‘We can do that.’ And then we find out they haven’t actually done it,” she says, explaining that tenants also might push back on things like low-flow toilets and faucets. If they don’t understand why the change is being made, they may fear that the new systems won’t work.
And while tenants are sometimes the source of challenges, Jones says they can also provide the level of excitement that keeps initiatives going. “When a project is finished, it’s always surprising to see how excited tenants are to announce the progress they’ve made.”
Carlos Santamaria
Vice President, Engineering Services
Glenborough, LLC
San Mateo, CA
Part of Carlos Santamaria’s success could be the way he embraces disappointment. “I love to fail because I learn from it,” says Santamaria, who pilots just about any project that makes sense in terms of being beneficial. “If it works … great! Every building is a unique eco-system, so not everything works for every building. We’ve implemented programs that were technologically sound, but adoption by the field and the tenants wasn’t quite there yet. So they didn’t work out.”
But that doesn’t stop Santamaria from getting ready to try something new. He is currently working on converting pneumatic thermostats (which he explains are present in 75 percent of existing buildings) to smart wireless devices at a fraction of the cost of wired DDC control conversions. One of his clients is paying for its thermostat project as part of Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s On-Bill Financing program. “It’ll be paid for in two years, and we’re getting $40,000 or $50,000 in utility rebates.”
He’s also working on analyzing load management for clients. “We’re trying to squeeze out as much energy savings as we can by putting smart meters on different energy loads,” he says. These meters push out real-time data that Santamaria uses to profile and offer advice to tenants about ways to reduce energy. ROI used to be the primary requirement for sustainability projects, he says, but top of mind now are also functionality, the indoor environment, and tenant comfort.
To get past sustainability hurdles, Santamaria advises leaving your comfort zone. “I always try to share whatever information I can. Information shouldn’t be proprietary.” His advice? Learn about systems and practices you don’t understand, and share that information with the people around you.
Frank Teng
Energy & Sustainability Program Manager
Jones Lang LaSalle
San Jose, CA
“ROI is on everyone’s mind,” says Frank Teng. “However, I’ve seen examples where ROI hasn’t been the deciding factor.” One project he references is the development of a sustainability program for a client’s corporate real estate team. “They had done some sustainability projects, but they needed to elevate their understanding to get to the next level. Investing in a learning program may not have a direct ROI, but over the long-term, the client should see a lot of benefit.”
Teng is currently working with a corporate campus to launch a composting program and increase recycling rates. He recently completed a LEED-EB O&M Gold project, and is also assisting clients with carbon reporting and providing savings updates to their executive teams.
A summer demand reduction program he implemented to achieve utility rebates ended up benefitting the client year-round. “We shut down lights and raised temperatures, and we made suggestions about how employees could stay comfortable,” says Teng. “We also showed them how energy use was dropping as a result of these changes.” Once the program was off the ground, Teng started receiving client e-mails asking if they could participate in the program annually vs. just in the summer months. “People discovered that they liked their office lights dimmer and wanted to turn them off or dim them year-round.”
Because he feels like there’s constantly room for improvement, Teng recommends always looking for opportunities. “Even in ENERGY STAR buildings with scores of 90, we’ve discovered fast payback projects.” Bringing in outside air economization to cool data centers is one way Teng achieved significant savings in already-efficient buildings.
Patience and flexibility is critical in this quickly growing industry. Teng says he’s seen rapid change sometimes derail projects. At one customer location, he developed an onsite composting program because there weren’t local composting programs available through the city. “We were composting a few thousand pounds of material a month, and we sent it to local organic educational farms.” The city ended up changing its regulations, however, and put its own composting program in place. His client could no longer use its own composting equipment or provide material to local farms. “There’s lots of industry excitement, so there’s also lots of movement. You have to be flexible and adapt.”
Eric Duchon, Melissa Jones, Carlos Santamaria and Frank Teng will share more of their expertise and experience on energy efficiency and sustainability projects during the “Energy Leadership: Defining Our Role” education session at the 2012 Every Building Conference & Expo, June 24-26 in Seattle Washington.
