NECA won’t be at the Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (http://en.cop15.dk/) this week, and the association doesn’t take a formal position on climate change. If you like, you can even discard the frequently used (and sometimes over-hyped) words “green” and “sustainable.”
What we can say for certain is this:
1. We can make buildings more efficient, electrically and systems-wise. We can even start to do that – via design-build and design-assist services – when a new building consists of nothing more than bits and bytes.
2. We can make an existing building’s lighting system much more productive (per dollar, per kilowatt-hour, etc.). We can do it tomorrow, without stimulus funding. More than 2 million U.S. buildings are candidates for a lighting upgrade.
3. A building’s owners and its occupants all benefit from energy-smart retrofits and the addition of solar photovoltaics or other renewable energy sources. The federal government (via the GSA) showed annual savings of 568 million kWh using just seven smart-energy strategies.
Further, GSA – a pioneer in energy-efficiency, BIM, and more – has studied its own efforts. Results of “greening” 12 GSA buildings were demonstrated with post-occupancy data. See this white paper (20-page PDF); there is also a 171-page full report.
Compared to national averages for all office buildings, not just those that are government-occupied, the “clean” dozen had:
- 26% less energy use;
- 13% lower aggregate maintenance costs;
- 27% higher occupant satisfaction; and
- 33% lower emissions of carbon dioxide.
All of this is important. It’s not “designed to achieve,” and it’s not savings-on-paper. It’s real-world, proven results. Perhaps a given building owner won’t really care about CO2 emissions. But an owner will want the other benefits we can deliver – lower energy bills, lower maintenance costs, and happier tenants!