The 2015 Building Energy Summit made headlines Wednesday when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized Washington, D.C. as the city with the most Energy Star certified buildings in 2014.
“This achievement is the result of strategic investments made by private sector owners, and both the federal and local governments, to reduce energy usage in the built environment,” DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) Executive Director Richard H. Bradley, said in a statement. “And even deeper value will be found in those investments, through the additional focus on changing occupant behaviors within buildings, which is part of the programs of the recently launched Smarter DC Challenge.”
Washington, D.C. had 480 Energy Star buildings in 2014, which means that the buildings met strict energy performance standards set by the EPA and earned a ranking of 75 or higher (indicating performance that is better than at least 75 percent of similar buildings nationwide.) It was D.C.’s first time on the top of the list, beating out Los Angeles, which has held the top spot since the program began in 2009. EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin presented the certificate Wednesday to Tommy Wells, acting director of the District Department of the Environment (DDOE), who accepted the award on behalf of Mayor Muriel Bowser.
The award fed into the narrative of the day, which is that Washington, D.C. stands out as an building energy performance leader. Topics of discussion at the summit, which is produced by CoR Advisors in partnership with the DowntownDC BID, included creating green buildings and “green leases,” how to capture energy data, particularly through the use of “smart meters,” how to analyze that data and how to change behaviors and decisions to best reduce energy usage and in turn, costs and potential pollution.
D.C. Chamber of Commerce President Harry Wingo told the audience of energy stakeholders that D.C. continues to increase its population by 1,000 people per month and has simultaneously become a leader in LEED and Energy Star certified buildings.
Much of the day’s discussion was on data. “We collected data everyday, but we dumped it,” Rudin Management Company Executive VP/COO John Gilbert explained in the opening panel discussion of his buildings’ operations. Rudin co-created Di-BOSS, a Digital Building Operating System, which seeks to provide service based on occupancy and energy usage. Learning that one of their buildings cools as tenants leave for lunch or leave at the end of the day meant that operators were able to slow the building fans, saving the owners energy and money. Another monitoring system they are using is for water, which allows buildings to monitor leaks and potentially avoid costly damage. “I’m really excited these buildings finally have a brain,” Rudin said of “smart” buildings.
Summit attendees were offered a variety of networking and education opportunities Wednesday, including education sessions on smart buildings, data, the Better Buildings Challenge, money-saving techniques and more.
One afternoon panel, “Aligning Energy Conservation Efforts Among Owners, Managers, Brokers, and Tenants” featured experts in local collaborative efforts to reduce energy usage. Sally Wilson, executive managing director of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, worked with Brookfield Properties and Jeff Lesk, D.C. managing partner of Nixon Peabody LLC, to structure a green lease that enabled both entities to meet their deep sustainability goals. The lease enabled Nixon Peabody to manage their own energy use and included a provision to install solar panels on their roof of 799 9th Street NW. Fifty percent of the energy generated by the solar panels will be used by Nixon Peabody and 50 percent will be assigned to the National Housing Trust to defray costs for low income residents in other parts of D.C.
Another education panel Wednesday discussed “smart meters” and data. Pepco has been investing tens of millions in addition to using federal grants to implement smart energy meters to bring more data to the user. To date, Pepco has installed 1.4 million smart meters in the D.C. region and New Jersey. “We embraced this technology very early. We were confident of it,” said Karen Lefkowitz, vice president of business transformation & CISO, Pepco Holdings, Inc. The result has been significant as smart meter usage has enabled residents as well as building owners and facility operators optimize their energy usage by providing real-time data for the first time.
As Sam Brooks, founder and managing director of ClearRock, explained, in the past it hasn’t been very motivating to view energy performance data if the most recent data is from 18 months prior. Today, “we are getting more data more quickly” he said, which is fueling immediate change.
The Building Energy Summit is an annual ticketed spring event. For highlights of this year’s summit and information on future events, please visit: http://2015.buildingenergysummit.com