Tower Companies, a DC based owner of large multi-tenant buildings and Better Buildings Challenge partner, engaged in an aggressive program to take measured data from their buildings and turn it into real energy savings. This case study, completed by Tower in partnership with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) describes outcomes at three properties. The case study was highlighted on a Better Buildings Webinar on February 5, 2014.
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On May 7-9, 2014, the U.S. Department of Energy hosted the Better Buildings Summit in Washington D.C. Speakers and attendees from the commercial, industrial, multifamily, and public sectors discussed how to achieve energy savings across their organizations, and Partners were recognized by Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz for their results and accomplishments in 2013. A description of the event can be found here: http://www4.eere.energy.gov/alliance/sites/default/files/uploaded-files/....
In case you missed the Summit this year, 180 presentations covered everything from emerging and high impact technologies, energy data management best practices, employee engagement and incentive programs, mobilizing capital and workforce training.
The objective of this demonstration project was to evaluate market-ready retrofit technologies for reducing the energy and water use of multi-load washers in healthcare and hospitality facilities. Specifically, this project evaluated ozone laundry technology in both the healthcare and hospitality sectors. This report documents the demonstration of ozone laundry system installations at the Charleston Place Hotel in Charleston, Sout Carolina, and the Rogerson House assisted living facility in Boston, Massachusetts.
When it comes to achieving significant sustainability gains, an international retail giant has unique opportunities to cut energy use. With a total of 4,500 sites, Walmart’s commitment to efficiency in parking lighting in new construction and retrofits is paying off in major savings.
As a result of its lighting upgrades Walmart received individual Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign awards for a superstore, a neighborhood market and a Sam’s Club. Across 100 stores including both new and retrofitted sites, over 40 million square feet in surfaces for parking and over 100,000 parking spaces, Walmart is saving over 15 million kWh each year as a result of lighting upgrades.
Kimco Realty Corporation’s large facility portfolio could be considered quite challenging to some organizations trying to reduce energy savings, but Kimco was able to provide upgrades to 160 sites across 25 states over 2 years. The 50-year old real estate investment trust based in New Hyde Park, New York was a 2014 Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign winner for Largest Absolute Number of Facility Upgrades. Kimco has reduced their lighting energy usage primarily through the use of lighting controls for their parking lots representing approximately 51
million square feet of parking area. Kimco, which owns and operates over 800 shopping centers in North and South America, can add their LEEP accomplishments to their 2013 National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) award for leadership in sustainability and energy efficiency.
Regency Centers is a national owner, operator, and developer of neighborhood and community shopping centers with over 300 properties throughout the United States. Regency Centers recently upgraded the parking lot lighting at Rona Plaza in Santa Ana, California. Rona Plaza is a grocery-anchored shopping center with 52,000 square-feet of gross lettable area and 250 parking spaces across 77,000 square feet of parking area. Regency Centers retrofitted the existing parking lot and exterior wall mounted fixtures, which were high-intensity discharge (HID) fixtures, with high efficiency LED fixtures coupled with a wireless dimming system. The retrofit resulted in energy savings of nearly 88% compared to pre-existing conditions and was recognized by the Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign with the Highest Percentage Energy Savings in a Retrofit at a Single Parking Area award.
The JBG Companies (JBG), an investor, owner, developer, and manager of real estate in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area, achieved almost 50% energy savings compared to energy code by using a combination of high efficiency LEDs coupled with lighting controls for the parking structure at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Shady Grove in Maryland. The NCI
parking structure was recognized by the Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign for the Highest Percentage Energy Savings in a Single Parking Structure (New Construction)
and Highest Absolute Annual Energy Savings in a Single Parking Structure (New Construction). In addition to its 2014 LEEP Campaign Award, the buildings have also been recognized in 2011, 2013, and 2014 by both local Maryland organizations and national organizations.
An increasing number of state and local jurisdictions are implementing building performance reporting laws, which generate large quantities of useful data on the characteristics and resource consumption of the building stock. However, to realize the potential of these policies, the data must not only be disclosed, but put to work to drive energy savings. Under a three-year pilot, Washington DC (DC), New York City (NYC) and their partners are pioneering the use of data from building performance reporting in energy efficiency programs. To minimize the administrative burden of managing, combining, and sharing these data sets, the cities are utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) open-source Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) Platform.
The Putting Data to Work project team is working with efficiency program administrators to develop and implement new and innovative ways in which the data collected through benchmarking, energy audits, and related policies can be used to improve energy policies and planning, unlock data directly for market use, scale-up the market for energy efficiency services, drive competition, better target utility incentive programs, and inform measurement and verification.
This paper details achievements and key findings in DC and NYC to date, including the importance of high compliance, data quality, and data cleansing in using the information collected; methods that the cities are using to apply data to drive maximum energy efficiency; and the importance of inter- and intra-agency collaboration in program success. The paper also outlines the path forward and details expected outcomes and scalability of project activities.
This 150,000 SF, LEED Gold, Net Zero facility was built on a 17.5 acre site in the city of Irving, Texas. Project cost was $29,610,423, and construction commenced on May 14, 2010. The project opened its doors for school on August 24, 2011. The building is structural steel frame with a brick and metal panel veneer. There are large expanses of windows for daylight harvesting. There are two stories consisting of classrooms, library, cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium. The structure fits on a very tight site with building orientation critical to energy conservation; native landscaping and pervious paving round out the exterior. The school uses extensive shading to minimize solar heat gain and incorporates wind turbines as a part of its onsite renewable energy generation portfolio.