Posts Tagged ‘green’
|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
Posted in Sustainability | Comments Off
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
Posted in Sustainability | Comments Off
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
Posted in Sustainability | Comments Off
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
Posted in Sustainability | 1 Comment »
Facilities Management and Energy Conservation
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
By Jim Ricker, Vice President, Corporate Services
For the past few years, we have all read vast amounts of literature about the need to conserve energy. During this time, energy conservation became known as “going green” or “sustainability.” Regardless of the names and definitions, they all are geared toward the same end—improved utilization of our finite resources to the point that we rely only upon renewable energy sources and reduce or even eliminate the waste stream.
While the terminology may change, professional Facilities Managers have long been striving to reach the goals of sustainability. These initiatives originated from the budget process – reducing operating expenses in order to free-up capital for research & development, marketing, and sales. During the Carter administration and the OPEC-generated oil crisis in the mid-‘70s, Facilities Managers responded to the national mandate to reduce energy consumption and the dependence upon foreign oil. Many readers will remember the gas lines, thermostats set in the low 60s, the emergence of the solar energy industry, and a national speed limit of 55 miles per hours.
As OPEC loosened its grip in the late ‘70s and oil started to flow again, these conservation initiatives were set aside by the Reagan administration. However, the majority of Facilities Managers continued their energy-savings efforts – even when the nation returned to 75 miles per hour on its highways. Budgets had to be tightly managed since the calls for capital did not change. So the enterprising Facilities Managers and their suppliers continued to innovate as before:
-Lighting energy usage continued to drop as electronic ballasts and more efficient lamps emerged. Foot candle measurements came into vogue as a means of determining the proper amount of lighting required for the tasks performed at the desktop.
-Paper products in the restroom migrated from all new content to primarily recycled content.
-Cleaning supplies went from chemicals that polluted our water supply to those that are essentially harmless to the environment.
-Motors were switched to more efficient models using substantially less electricity.
-HVAC systems were changed to heat pumps and central systems using highly efficient chillers circulating chilled water to remote units.
-Low-flow and battery-operated fixtures were installed in restrooms.
-Control systems were replaced with those that more efficiently matched up-time with usage requirements.
Today, Facilities Managers are in the lead in pushing for more innovations for solar systems, wind systems, and even tidal power in certain localities. They recognize it is the only way to further reduce energy costs and also the way to eliminate dependence on finite resources by utilizing renewable alternatives.
Tags: corporate real estate, FM, green, OPEC, renewable energy, sustainable
Posted in Facilities Management | Comments Off
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
Posted in Sustainability | Comments Off
Sustainability Promises Transparency and Opportunities
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
By Mike Tobin
Let’s continue down this track of discussing the new clean/green technology decade as I am inspired by the changes and opportunities that await us all.
As discussed last time, the current activity surrounding greenhouse gas policy and regulation will cause a myriad of changes in the way we assess real estate. One of the larger catalysts of change will be the increased level of transparency in the marketplace. The greater availability of operational data will trigger multiple opportunities and challenges for businesses worldwide. Amazingly, this transparency is already taking place due to the efficiency of our capital markets and the desire to get ahead of the competition.
The market’s early adopters are embracing the possibility and inevitability of future regulation by reporting greenhouse gas emissions in the form of disclosure reports like the Carbon Disclosure Project. In reviewing the companies that are already involved in the Carbon Disclosure Project, one will find a lengthy list of formidable companies that are measuring and disclosing this new information. This new level of disclosure is also having a ripple effect as the vendors and suppliers of these companies are being asked for similar data and told that service selection will depend to a degree on the information provided.
Walmart is a case in point of this ripple effect. Last year they announced their 15 point Sustainable Product Index – eight of which are impacted by real estate decisions – and indicated that this will factor into their vendor and product selection. When Walmart says jump, the rest of the market says, “How high?”
Another area of transparency that relates to greenhouse gas emissions is the energy use of buildings. Historically, the market has not had a reliable method to determine the energy efficiency of any given building. That could change in 2010 with the anticipated release of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) new Building Energy Quotient (Building EQ). This new labeling system will join the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Star program as the two major programs that can be used to reliably measure the energy performance of a building.
As our society looks for ways to reduce energy consumption, information is the critical first step to help make informed choices and changes. Decision-makers will spur a review of the methodology to select, value, and underwrite property. They will reweight the emphasis placed on different aspects of a piece of real estate and create entirely new aspects.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of the potential changes on the horizon due to the increased transparency in the marketplace. Questions still remain like:
- Will other companies create competing Sustainable Product Indexes to that of
Walmart?
- Will building labels be voluntary or become a national requirement?
- How will financial underwriters take into account an energy rating system?
- What will your corporate real estate’s new GHG emission and energy usage
thresholds become?
As we enter the new decade with the promise of more transparency, what do you see on the horizon?
Tags: ASHRAE, building EQ, carbon disclosure project, DOE, energy, energy star, green, greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable product index, walmart
Posted in Sustainability | Comments Off
Dawn of the Green Technology Decade
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
By Mike Tobin
Welcome to 2010 and the dawning of the clean/green technology decade – or so we are led to believe! The current administration has ushered in the new decade with some very exciting steps towards embracing a more sustainable and environmentally focused strategy which has the potential to dramatically affect our real estate market. From the notable steps taken by the Supreme Court in the 2007 ruling that the EPA must regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the recent December 7, 2009 announcement in which the EPA has formally determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, it is inevitable that business as usual will no longer exist as it relates to greenhouse gas emissions. Congress will need to pass comprehensive greenhouse gas regulation soon otherwise the EPA will be required to regulate these emissions under rules that most experts consider inefficient. It was therefore more of a formality and favorable political opportunity for President Obama to finally, and confidently, put the United States in the middle of the discussions on global warming and limiting greenhouse gas emissions at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen this past month.
Regardless of politics, the winds of change are blowing harder than ever in relation to how businesses address greenhouse gas emissions and other sustainability issues. Leading companies have already put in place a strategic sustainability plan and begun to measure their carbon footprint, analyze their exposure to “dirty” fuels, and assess their capabilities to harness renewable energy sources (among other objectives). All companies could substantially benefit from developing a similar plan to position themselves for the cleaner/greener future.
Within this sustainability plan, the impact on real estate will be profound as companies struggle to adjust to the new regulations and stakeholder expectations, as well as the necessary efforts to take advantage of the myriad of incentives and initiatives surrounding them. This era of change brings with it opportunities for success but it also brings the potential for pitfalls. In order to capitalize on the future, leading companies are diligently working now at the forefront of change to identify both the opportunities and pitfalls.
For example, we all know the key in real estate is “location, location, location”. The new changes on the horizon will affect the playing field for finding the best sites. Site location criteria will begin to focus more on the mix of local fuel sources with an eye toward avoiding areas with “dirtier” fuels and areas with local utilities that have a higher cost to meet compliance. “Dirtier” fuels and higher conformance costs will translate into higher costs to consumers. Also, understanding the feasibility of local renewable energy sources will become more important as this will affect the prioritization of sites that allow a company to tap into the most efficient renewable energy systems that will provide clean, consistent power at relatively stable prices into the future.
As we begin 2010, how are you helping your company or your client prepare for – and capitalize on – the clean tech decade?
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in CresaPartners’ Blog represent those of our bloggers, and not necessarily those of the firm.
Tags: green, renewable energy, sustainable
Posted in Sustainability | 1 Comment »
