Energy efficiency in buildings (and why owners don't care)

By Doug Peeples

SGN  News Editor

Building efficiency is a huge opportunity to conserve a whole lot of energy. We do a lot of stories about the benefits of energy efficiency, how it's almost free energy in the sense that we don't have to generate it. But it looks a lot like we may have overlooked one incredibly important part of the picture: the commercial real estate professionals, the folks who own and manage the buildings.

I've been at the Smart Energy International conference in San Francisco for the past couple days. The drill is I try to meet, interview and generally learn something and get stories from the exhibiting vendors  – and go to the presentations and panel sessions for the same reasons.

But not all panel discussions are the same. I went to one on Tuesday with the typical but interesting title "Smart Energy and its Role in the Journey to Smart Cities." A lot of good discussion and give and take on things like technology, some commentary on Boulder, Colorado's now 'legendary' SmartGridCity, efficiency and energy savings programs, automation, renewables portfolio standards and all of what you'd expect to hear under a title like that.

But a sub-theme that kept popping up, thanks to panel moderator and CoR Advisors CEO Darlene Pope, was the key players, the commercial real estate professionals who own the big, energy-draining facilities we talk about when we're discussing energy efficiency in buildings. The company she runs provides education and consulting services to those professionals in best practices for building technologies, energy management and sustainable business practices.

Pope and her people always thought the owners were aware and interested – on board. But she cited a recent survey of 2,400 real estate pros that yielded 600 responses. The results? Not what she expected: 68% of the respondents aren't involved in DR programs and 80% said they have no plans to connect to the grid.

Yes, of course there are numerous examples of building owners individually and collaboratively working on efficiency in a big way, like Seattle's Better Buildings Challenge and the roughly year-old collaboration between Charlotte City Center Partners, Duke Energy and Cisco.

But at least some recent studies agree with Pope: Building owners don't necessarily see the value of smart grid. They see technological challenges, but no value propositions. She put it more succinctly: They're in business to make money, not save the planet.

Even though, as panelist Carlos Santamaria put it, "Energy is the number one controllable expense in our budget." He should know. He is engineering services VP for Glenborough LLC, and the company's mission in life is to bring existing buildings of all types as up to speed as possible for its clients.

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