Archive for the ‘Sustainability’ Category
« Older Entries |Split Incentives Key to Energy Efficiency
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
By Mike Tobin, Director of Sustainability
Every tenant wants to pay less in operating expenses, and every landlord is challenged with how to maintain or improve their property to provide competitive operating costs. When it comes to capital investments in building systems, the conversation between the two can become frosty as neither one wants to be burdened with the expense.
In order to improve the energy efficiency of our national and international building stock, it is imperative that we identify a framework for addressing split incentives in both a working and legal relationship. To that end, CresaPartners participated in a workshop hosted by BOMA and the Rocky Mountain Institute to attempt to build just such a framework. BOMA and several of the other participants approached the issue from a landlord’s or owner’s perspective, and CresaPartners brought the tenant’s perspective to balance the table during the discussions. The result of this workshop will be a guidebook that outlines the issues and creates a road map for possible win-win solutions. The goal is to release this to the market by the end of the year.
I’ll outline a few of the key items that were addressed to hopefully spur some further discussion. One discussion point is whether or not the lease or another side agreement should be used to outline split incentive agreements. One on side, the lease is the central legal document to the relationship between landlord and tenant. It is the place to outline any split incentives such as allowing the landlord to pass through to the tenant the cost to upgrade the HVAC system. On the other side, the landlord in a multi-tenant building will have many different leases or forms, and it will be very time consuming and expensive to amend each lease for the split incentive. As a result, a side agreement may conceivably be more efficient to simply focus on the split incentive while not opening up the lease.
Another issue arises out of the multi-tenant buildings—how does a landlord move forward with an energy efficiency project if not all of the tenants agree to the split incentive agreement? A simple answer is that the landlord would just have to decide whether or not it was in their best interest to maintain that asset and thus make the capital investment themselves. But the landlord can also do more to try to be a better salesman. In a lot of instances, the tenants feel as if the landlord is trying to pull something over on them. By engaging the tenants earlier in an open dialogue and providing transparency into the capital planning, energy costs, etc., then the landlord may be able to do a better job of selling the building improvements.
This discussion of improved salesmanship brings up the area of financing the improvement. A new area of financing has arisen for landlords that will provide the upfront capital in return for the cost difference due to improvement in operating efficiency. If the new system is really efficient, then the financing entity gets a nice return. If the system is inefficient, then the financing entity may lose money. The tenants do not realize the cost benefit from the more efficient system during the term of the contract, but they are guaranteed a steady cost of energy that is no more than their current rate. The challenge is that the financing entity will not provide financing if not all of the tenants are in agreement. If not all tenants are in agreement, then there may be other financing agreements that can be structured to meet those needs. By openly discussing these options, the landlord may encourage non-committed tenants to commit.
Sales also takes a certain amount of trust that is sometimes hard to find in a tenant/landlord relationship. In order to build trust, landlords can improve the transparency of the building operations by doing something like publicly proclaiming the energy star rating or the energy use per square foot of the building. There is a lot of debate in the market today about whether or not landlords should be required to give energy star ratings or other national building labels. As tenants and brokers, let’s ask every landlord for their energy star rating (and/or energy use per square foot) until it becomes abnormal not to provide that level of transparency. In that way, we establish a basic level of shared understanding about the building and can build upon that to find common ground and win-win improvement scenarios.
This is just a sampling of some of the issues that were discussed surrounding split incentives, and there are many more issues and ideas around this topic. If you have any good examples or other ideas, please feel free to write me and help us promote better building efficiency through split incentives.
Tags: BOMA, corporate real estate, energy efficiency, energy star, landlord, sustainable, tenant
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How to Hire Green Vendors, Part II
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
By Mike Tobin, Director of Sustainability
In Part I, I discussed some first steps in the process of hiring green vendors: recognizing that the number of green vendors has grown exponentially in the last few years and defining your company’s objectives and requirements for hiring the vendor.
Once you have clearly defined the objectives and requirements, then the next thing to do is think through how you will rate the different vendors. You will need to outline what criteria you will need in order to make a selection. In this emerging field of sustainability, there are some criteria that I suggest are important to request of any vendor:
1. Experience – Ask for specific experience they have had providing the requested products or services. Ask them to detail the service provided including the type, size, and scope of their client engagement plus the results. In addition, ask for references that you can contact. This is a young field and everyone is trying to get into it. So be wary of “green washing” where the marketing looks good but is different than what is actually practiced.
2. Professional Credentials – Having credentials from a third party accredited organization bears a lot of weight when working in a new or unknown field. For example, a prominent credential in the market today for design and construction
professionals is a LEED Accreditated Professional (AP) designation. If your tactical goal was to achieve a LEED certification for a new office space, it would be prudent to bring on vendors that understand the LEED program which can be illustrated by their LEED AP status.
Fortunately, many professional organizations are mobilizing to provide education and training for their members that
specialize in sustainable real estate practices. Unfortunately, a lot of these efforts are still in their infancy and are underdeveloped. So, as you review credentials for vendors, you may have to do some investigation of your own to validate the authenticity and strength of those credentials. For example, there are two major certifications for sustainably harvested wood products: Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI) and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). One is a self prescribed certification (SFI), and one is third-party verified (FSC). By asking the questions and doing some investigation, you will quickly find out which ones have sufficient merit for your needs and those that do not.
3. Financial relationships – Ask what their compensation structure is and what their revenue streams are within the company. This will quickly tell you if they are a sales company masquerading as a consultant or a solar power rep trying to be an all encompassing renewable energy engineer.
4. Cost – Ask for cost of service broken down into understandable pieces. Hourly rates should be easy to decipher and compare to other similar services.
5. Green costs – Ask if there are any other unknown costs or expenses that may be associated with their services as it relates to your sustainable goals. One common example is that some companies will charge an additional cost for the documentation associated with the LEED certification program. The goal is to compare proposals as “apples-to-apples” and expose any potential cost additions.
Next you must develop a list of potential vendors. Since this is a young field of service, you may have to cast a wider net than you may normally. It is not uncommon to go quite a distance geographically to find the expertise that you need. Do not be afraid to do so as this will likely increase your odds of finding the right fit for your need. For that effort, I would recommend contacting
the local and national trade organizations for recommendations or other sustainable resources (e.g. UGBC, GreenSpec, etc.). You will be surprised at how small the world gets when looking for the best sustainable vendors.
As a side note on this step, I have found it beneficial in some instances to select vendors from a distant geographic location to join a local team. The transfer of knowledge and the adaptation to change has been much faster in those instances. Subsequently the local vendors adapt too and become more competitive in the future which helps the future bottom line.
The final step is to send out the request for proposals, receive the proposals, conduct interviews and make the selection. Easy enough! Well maybe not that easy but hopefully you will have the information you need to make an educated decision to support your sustainable real estate strategy.
Tags: corporate real estate, green, vendor, vendor selection
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How to Hire Green Vendors, Part I
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
By Mike Tobin, Director of Sustainability
So you have decided to implement sustainable real estate strategies within your organization. Congratulations are in order as that means you have gone through a strategic planning process that included a focus on sustainability and its relation to the built environment. Now comes the hard part of implementation. How do you find vendors that know how to help implement your carefully crafted strategy?
First and foremost it is important to recognize that there are MANY different types of vendors that claim to support sustainable
practices—a number which has grown exponentially in the last five years. So whereas before there were one or two choices for vendors providing a specific sustainability service, there are probably ten times that amount today. In addition, they each say roughly the same thing but in a slightly nuanced way so that they all seem to blend together. I like to think of it in the same was as assessing how to select an air conditioner repair vendor. There are hundreds to choose from and some can repair all systems, some can only work on major brands, some on only one brand, some also sell new systems, some sell components, some are licensed, etc. At this point, before you just give in and go with the first one that appears on a Google search, stop and recognize that a simple search will not suffice. You will need to set up a selection process.
The next step is to establish this selection process. Again this is no different than any other vendor selection process, but now, because you recognized how complex the sustainable vendor field has become, you must think of this as a more complex vendor selection. The first thing you must do is clearly define your objectives and requirements for hiring the vendor. This will help your organization think through the details of the implementing the strategic goals before you let a vendor enter into the conversation and potentially steer you one way or another. Now you may talk to a few different vendors to better understand the tactical options available in the market—this is not a selection interview, just an informational interview. The amount of time and effort you put into this step—tackling your internal issues first before you expose them to the vendor community—will pay off handsomely down the road.
In Part II, I will discuss the remaining steps in choosing vendors to implement sustainable real estate strategies: developing your criteria for the selection process, developing a list of potential vendors, and sending and processing RFPs. I will particularly concentrate on the criteria I think you should focus on in your selection process.
Tags: corporate real estate, green, vendor, vendor selection
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Server Rooms: Going Green and Saving Green – Part II
Friday, March 4th, 2011
By Matt Newstrom, Senior Advisor
In Part I, I discussed a CresaPartners client, PECI, and how it applied progressive energy conservation strategies to its server room. In this entry, we will look at the third and fourth strategies.
Strategy Three – Air-side Economizer
By definition, an air-side economizer is “a mechanical device used to reduce energy consumption. Economizers recycle energy produced within a system or leverage environmental temperature differences to achieve efficiency improvements.” Since PECI both raised the approved temperature set-point to 85 degrees and confined, redirected, and used the heat load created by the servers, it was able to use the ambient office air to “cool” its server equipment. This means that as long as the building’s central plant is conditioning the office space (Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. – 6 p.m.), PECI will be in effect getting “free cooling” for its server room. So, by doing simple math, there are 8,760 hours in a year, and for about 2,600 of those hours, the building is being controlled for occupant use and will be well under PECI’s 85 degree allowable operating temperature.
Outside the normal “occupied” hours in most buildings, the building systems typically will go into cooling mode on nights and weekends when the indoor temperature reaches the mid-80s (some buildings may let their temperatures float up from there, some below). While PECI’s installation is new, and over the next year, hard data will be collected through its energy monitoring system, it is expected the company will only need to rely on supplemental cooling on nights and weekends in the summer months, if at all.
Strategy Four – TIMING!!
I put TIMING in all caps since all of the strategies listed above will be much more difficult to achieve if you wait until your new building is selected, the lease is signed, and the construction documents are at 90%. If you wait until the lease is signed, then you are already behind the eight-ball and can miss out on opportunities that exist during the negotiation phase. In the case of PECI, we spent many hours upfront and even before touring prospective buildings, documenting the requirements and goals of the project beyond the basic questions about “how much space do we lease, and what is the cost per foot?”
The project used an integrated team approach in which we engaged engineers, project management consultants, PECI staff, and the landlord early to gain consensus on what the limitations and opportunities were. Getting an early start on the server room design (as well as other energy-saving initiatives) allowed us to locate the server room in the optimal location of the building and leverage landlord funds to cover the additional costs associated with the build and the other energy-saving tenant improvements.
While not all engineers and IT experts will always agree with some of these ideas and practices, the point is that the problem of excessive energy usage in call centers and server rooms needs a solution, and rethinking “the norm” is what each of us needs to be doing to raise the bar.
Tags: corporate real estate, data center, energy conservation, green, server room, sustainable
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Server Rooms: Going Green and Saving Green – Part I
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
By Matt Newstrom, Senior Advisor
I was recently at the BetterBricks Award Breakfast, and the keynote speaker quoted a few statistics regarding energy usage that I had not heard before. According to the Department of Energy , data centers can consume up to 100 times more energy than a standard office building. Between 2000 and 2006, data center energy usage more than doubled, reaching more than 60 billion kilowatt hours per year. Through programs like LEED, the US Green Building Council has done a great job of educating the public and getting more commonly known statistics out to the masses. For example, in the US, buildings consume about 70% of all electricity usage and about 40% of all primary energy usage. Facts and figures like these are acting as a catalyst for changing people’s thinking, awareness, and practices. Whether the motivation for reducing energy usage is to impact the bottom-line fiscally or to save natural resources, either way, we see it as “doing the right thing.”
Now, while those figures are staggering, you may be asking yourself, “I’m a user of office space and don’t own or operate a data center, so what does this have to do with me?” Well, many of the operational practices and principles that data center operators such as Google, Intel, and HP are implementing in the way of energy conservation can be applied to users of office space. Most IT departments require supplemental cooling of their server rooms. The IT personnel calculate the heat load, how many tons of cooling is required to maintain the room at a specific temperature, and then install a CRAC (computer room air-conditioner) unit that will run 24/7/365. CresaPartners recently had the pleasure of partnering with a leader in energy conservation PECI on the leasing, planning, and project management of its new 60,000 SF office space. While PECI implemented many progressive energy conservation strategies into tenant improvements, the one that resonated most with me is the approach to the server room. We’ll be dissecting this approach by taking a closer look at four strategies:
Strategy One – Containing and Exhausting the Hot Air
PECI implemented the use of a “chimney cabinet” versus a more standard four-post rack or cabinet enclosure. The purpose of the chimney cabinet is to exhaust 100% of the heat created by the server equipment out of the back of the servers and into a return duct or directly to the outside. In PECI’s case, it took all of the hot air produced by the servers and ducted it through a coil that then pre-heats its domestic hot water, sends some of the excess heat down to the ground floor retail tenant, and then discharges it into the building’s return plenum. This accomplishes two things: 1) it takes away the heat load that would otherwise be expelled into the room, then costing the tenant to be cooled by supplemental means, and 2) it saves energy that would be required to heat the hot water for the kitchen and coffee bars and heat for the ground-floor tenant.
Strategy Two – Server Room Temperature Set-Point
Most of the corporations that I’ve worked with set their temperature set-point in their server room or telecom closet at 69-72 degrees. Typically, this will require some type of supplemental cooling system to maintain those temperatures, which most of the time must run around the clock. PECI has initially set its set-point for cooling at 85 degrees, with the goal of moving it to 90 degrees. While this may appear to be extreme, a number of studies show that show that running equipment in higher temperature ranges found “no consistent increase” in failure rates due to the greater variation in temperature. With that said, it is advised that you check with the equipment manufacturer to verify any specific warranty requirements associated with operating temperature being met.
Stay tuned for Part II of this series, where I will discuss the third and fourth strategies implemented by PECI.
Tags: corporate real estate, data center, energy conservation, green, server room, sustainable
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Sustainability: Global Trends that Affect Real Estate
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
By Mike Tobin, Director of Sustainability
Can one summarize all of the 2010 issues and events that will affect sustainable real estate practices in 2011 and beyond? Probably, but it would not fit into this blog post. I will attempt to highlight a few key events/issues that have, and will continue to have, an impact on real estate and hope that others will add their thoughts.
I. Greenhouse Gas Regulation
The government did not enact comprehensive greenhouse gas regulation legislation, which forces the EPA to begin addressing the issue through the Clean Air Act.
II. Climate Change Disclosure
The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) requires disclosure of the impact of climate change as a business risk to companies.
III. Global CEO Study on Sustainability
This summer, the UN Global Compact–Accenture CEO Study 2010 that surveyed more than 750 global CEOs on sustainability was released. The results indicate that sustainability is and will continue to be a major focus for business success in the future. A few key findings:
-93% of CEOs surveyed see sustainability as important to the future success of their 
businesses.
-96% believe that sustainability issues should be fully integrated into the strategy and operations of a company (up from 72% in 2007).
-91% report that their company will employ new technologies (e.g. renewable energy, energy efficiency, and information and communication technologies) to address sustainability issues over the next five years.
-72% cite “strengthening brand, trust, and reputation” as the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability.
-49% cite complexity of implementation across functions as the most significant barrier to implementing an integrated, company-wide approach to sustainability.
A more detailed look at some of the results can be seen in Figures 1-3 and 2-1.
IV. United Nations Annual Climate Conference in Cancun, Mexico
The United Nations held their annual Climate Conference in late 2010 to build upon the international environmental treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). This treaty was originally created at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The objective of the treaty is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. As of December 2009, the treaty had 192 signatory countries.
The meeting in Cancun is being summarized by the Cancun Agreements which some say make good progress toward achieving global support of reducing global GHG emissions and some say do not do much of anything to promote progress. To learn more about the conference, check out these two articles from The New York Times and The Washington Post which do a good job of summarizing the meeting’s outcome.
Another New York Times article relates how the Agreements may provide industrial countries wiggle room to get out of the Kyoto Protocol (the best known protocol of this treaty which was adopted in 1997) at the end of the first phase. The first phase of the Kyoto Protocol called for industrialized nations to collectively cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 5.2% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The second phase is for years 2013 through 2018, and countries are to recommit to new emission reduction goals. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol)
V. The USGBC holds its annual Greenbuild conference in Chicago, IL.
The United States Green Building annual Greenbuild Conference was held in late 2010. The conference attracted approximately 30,000 attendees and more than 1,800 exhibitors. As an attendee, some of my key takeaways were:
-Institutional investors recognize the value of green commercial real estate – it is turning the corner from being a niche investment criterion to becoming more mainstream.
-Transparency is increasing in the real estate market.
-Green building technology continues to improve.
-The breadth of green real estate services continues to expand
-The market is beginning to focus on carbon as the metric to define “green.”
What other events in 2010 do you feel have or will have an impact on sustainable real estate practices?
Tags: climate change, corporate real estate, green, greenbuild, greenhouse gas emissions, kyoto protocol, usgbc
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Sustainability Opens Doors with Clients and Prospects
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
By Mike Tobin
Ever desire another angle to get a foot in the door with a prospective client or mine deeper with a current client? Sustainability is one of those hot topics that can lead to fruitful discussions with anyone in any company. The reason for this is that sustainability is a main ingredient in the recipe for success in today’s marketplace regardless of service, product, or industry.
Companies inherently desire to be sustainable, which at its basic definition means to be successful and sustain operations. Today’s umbrella term “sustainability” evolved out of trends such as lean manufacturing, green architecture, energy efficiency, and others. These trends have all been aimed at making businesses more productive while better utilizing resources and reducing risk.
So it should be fairly easy to begin a conversation with a client or prospect with questions surrounding what they are currently doing to improve productivity, operate more efficiently, and reduce risk. The client or prospect might take this in multiple directions but it is guaranteed to involve a discussion of some sort of initiative that is on top of their mind. In this way, one can engage a client on their terms and priorities while ascertaining how real estate may be able to help them achieve their goals or enhance their success.
Sustainability also has other meaningful discussion topics that can bear fruitful conversations. Most companies have similar challenges such as:
• Marketing,
• Sales,
• Branding, or
• Attracting or retaining talent
Sustainability can play a substantial role in each of these areas in today’s market place. Consumers and stakeholders alike are more knowledgeable and savvy about product, service, and corporate differentiators including one’s sustainable attributes. As mentioned in a previous entry, increased market transparency is allowing clients, consumers, and stakeholders the ability to make choices based on an increasing amount of information. As the public has become more aware about sustainability, companies have been forced to react to pro-sustainability desires.
One may start the conversation with a client or prospect about how sustainability is used in their sales and marketing efforts. The conversation may follow a discussion of positive attributes that the company is looking to enhance or illustrate—product packaging, positioning, resources used, etc. This discussion may easily lead to a discussion of how real estate may enhance those efforts or even provide new angles for supporting their sustainable image.
The conversation may also bring to light that there is a risk in not aligning their real estate with their sustainability initiative. For example, if a product or service is advertised to be sustainable yet the company itself is a gross polluter or somehow does not walk the talk, the damage to the brand’s image could be disastrous.
Another conversation point may be the attraction and retention of talent in the corporation. One key attribute that today’s talent pool looks for is a sustainable work environment. These are places that are generally more healthy and attractive to work and indicate a more progressive corporate management. For corporate management, a sustainable real estate strategy achieves the goal of attracting and retaining key talent while at the same time often leading to more efficient operations.
Sustainability as an umbrella touches all aspects of a business. If you want to get to know your client or prospect and understand their business in more depth discuss their thoughts on sustainability. You may be surprised at how easily it is to link sustainable real estate into a discussion on how sustainability is impacting other core aspects of the business.
How does sustainability impact your business? How do you talk to clients about sustainability?
Tags: corporate real estate, sustainable
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Do Sustainable Real Estate Practices Cost More? Part II
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
By Mike Tobin
In Part I, I began my discussion of whether or not sustainable real estate practices are more expensive. Many individuals say that the cost of coordination and documentation to LEED or other programs pushes the price of sustainable real estate practices to a 10% premium. This is an exaggeration that can be broken up into three facets—one of which I discussed in Part I (Program Fees) and the other two which I will discuss now (Professional Fees and Prerequisite Costs).
The Professional Fees are the fees associated with hiring a consultant to provide the additional service of coordinating the submittal to the sustainable program. These fees have a high degree of variance across the country based on the experience of the project team, the certification program, the complexity of the project, etc. Typically, the lower costs come from consultants who have significant experience with the certification process and are not padding their fees for unknown risk.
Example #1: $2M renovation of a 30,000 SF office. Additional fee for architect to coordinate the LEED certification submittal equals $0 as it is included in the architect’s competitive fee. That is 0% of the project cost.
Example #2: $20M build-to-suit of a 100,000 SF office building. Additional fee for architect to coordinate the LEED certification submittal equals $30,000. That is .15% of the project cost.
The Prerequisite Costs include services that are required in order to meet the requirements of the sustainable program. It is important to note that these costs may or may not already be included in the base project costs (another way of saying that these may not be viewed as additional costs as they are a valued component of the base design). Some common prerequisites are energy modeling and building commissioning. These costs vary depending on the scope and complexity of the project.
Example #1: $2M renovation of a 30,000 SF office. Additional fee for consultant to perform required energy analysis and building commissioning equals $10,000 and $30,000, respectively. That is 2% of the project cost.
Example #2: $20M build-to-suit of a 100,000 SF office building. Additional fee for consultant to perform required energy analysis and building commissioning equals $20,000 and $60,000, respectively. That is .4% of the project cost.
If you add all these costs up for the two examples you have the following approximation of fees for achieving a certified sustainable project:
Example #1: 2.16% of project costs
Example #2: 0.58% of project costs
Before anyone goes and starts using these examples to wave in the air about the new cost of pursuing a sustainable real estate practice, note the following errors in logic that make them suspect (there probably are more):
-These examples are for project pursuing a sustainable certification program. This is different from pursuing sustainable real estate practices that may not include a certification program.
-There are many different sustainable certification programs out there with varied certification fees.
-Professional fees vary significantly depending on sustainable program, experience, competitive bidding, market, building type, etc.
-Prerequisite costs vary as some sustainable programs do not have any requirements.
-Prerequisite costs may not be considered additional costs. The owner may consider an energy model or building commissioning good practice to include in their baseline.
The truth is that one cannot generalize the cost of incorporating sustainable real estate practices. The fact is that sustainable real estate practices DO NOT necessarily cost more. The key is to understand what the baseline is for the comparison.
And with this truth, fact and key, you are FREE to practice sustainable real estate. Are you planning on implementing a sustainable real estate strategy?
Tags: LEED, sustainable
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Do Sustainable Real Estate Practices Cost More? Part I
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
By Mike Tobin
There is a myth that sustainable real estate practices are more expensive, and it needs to be put to rest. The myth is causing more harm than good in the market and it is time to shed light on the truth.
So, are sustainable real estate practices more expensive? In order to answer this, one is forced to first determine what we are measuring up against. When you hear someone say, “A sustainable building costs 10% more,” please ask them what they are comparing that to. Some of the typical responses are:
a) A typical building of similar size and function.
This does not hold water as there is no common definition of a typical building. There are millions of buildings in the United States alone that have been constructed and operated over the course of centuries. The Davis Langdon company, among others, has performed multiple studies to properly define a typical set of buildings to make an accurate and statistically relevant comparison for LEED certified buildings. Their study (and others) have found that there is no statistical evidence to support that LEED certified projects cost more than similar buildings not certified.
b) A code compliant building of similar size and function.
This also does not hold water as every building constructed must be code compliant. Even if they meant to compare it to a building built to code minimum, it is safe to say that there are very few buildings built today to the exact code minimums. It would be ridiculous for someone to compare their building to something that they would never build in the first place.
c) The cost alone of coordination and documentation to LEED or other programs pushes the price to a 10% premium.
This is an extreme exaggeration. The fact is that the cost to certify a building to many of the sustainable building programs is minimal. There are three facets to this cost exaggeration though that needs explanation: Program Fees, Professional Fees, and Prerequisite Costs.
The Program Fees are the fees associated with the registering and submitting a project to the sustainable building program. These are typically much less than 1% of project costs.
Example #1: $2M renovation of a 30,000 SF office. Cost to register and submit the project to the LEED program equals $3,150. That is 0.16% of the project cost.
Example #2: $20M build-to-suit of a 100,000 SF office building. Cost to register and submit the project to the LEED program equals $5,400. That is 0.027% of the project cost.
Stay tuned for Part II on Friday where I will discuss Professional Fees and Prerequisite Costs.
Tags: LEED, sustainable
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6 Steps to Help Prevent Oil Spills
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
By Mike Tobin
A good sustainability blogger cannot ignore one of the largest natural disasters of our generation without using it as a springboard for ideas or a soap box for preaching. In either case, the hope is that people will take note and begin to recognize how their behavior has a direct impact on the oil spill that has dominated headlines for the past two months. With that in mind, let’s just focus on people who own, work in, or work on commercial buildings. That should cover the majority of people in the United States.
Here are 6 steps to help prevent oil spills:
1) Engage your Building Management
Sometimes landlords and building owners are reluctant to take action because they do not believe their tenants/employees will care. Speak up! Ask the building manager/owner for advice on how to reduce your energy costs. Engage them in conversation about their plans for the building and tell them that you are interested in doing your part to improve the operating efficiency. This saves everyone money and it can PREVENT OIL SPILLS.
2) Have your Building Energy Star Rated
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides a rating system that can provide a comparison of your building to others around the nation as it relates to its energy efficiency. By running your building through the Energy Star program, the building will not only provide a snapshot of how it is currently performing but also will help to identify areas to improve that rating – helping to save money, reduce carbon emissions, and PREVENT OIL SPILLS.
3) Move to an Energy Efficient Building
If you can, move to an energy efficient building or plan on relocating to one in the future. Demand that it be better than what you are in today. There is no reason why you should settle to pay more to for an inferior building (buildings that aren’t energy efficient cost more to operate). Granted, this is a little harsh because there are many other factors to consider when selecting real estate but operating efficiency is a major financial consideration. We have the technology and there are many incentives to do so (economic, social, personal); now we just need the demand. Demand it! It can PREVENT OIL SPILLS.
4) Design & Construct your Next Space or Building Efficiently
If you are planning to change your commercial real estate in any way, engage professionals who understand how to optimize for energy efficiency, material selection, and waste minimization. There is a big difference between service professionals who understand this type of design and construction and those who just pay it lip service. Look for experienced professionals with suitable accreditations (e.g. LEED AP, Green Advantage, etc.). However, beware as every good salesman will tell you that they can provide what you are looking for – make sure to do your homework. A well designed and constructed facility will save you money upfront and over the lifetime of your building. It can also help prevent the unnecessary disposal of materials, minimize the shipment of materials, and optimize the lifecycle cost of materials used in your building. This will help PREVENT OIL SPILLS.
5) Encourage Alternative Transportation
Lobby the landlord for bike racks. Lobby the city for community bikes (as an example, the City of Minneapolis, MN just introduced a community bike program that supplies pay-per-use bikes conveniently parked in the downtown area). Lobby your management for incentives to carpool, rideshare, and/or bike to work (incentives can be monetary as a savings to offset parking fees, a membership to a fitness center, or free taxi/bus passes). This will help PREVENT OIL SPILLS.
6) Do Not Use Cars
Take a commuter challenge and take alternative transportation to work. Try it to a) see if you can do it and b) if it works for you. You may like it! Purchase or lease a fuel efficient car, hybrid electric vehicle, flex fuel vehicle, or any number of fuel efficient automobile options. Rideshare or carpool. This will PREVENT OIL SPILLS.
As a child I know recently said, “We should have thought about those animals before we drilled for more oil.” Let’s think of those animals and do our part to prevent it from happening again.
What steps are you planning on taking to help prevent oil spills?
Tags: alternative transportation, energy efficient, energy star, oil spill
Posted in Sustainability | Comments Off
