Energy Efficiency: It’s Not Just for Houses.

Here at CUB we place a lot of value and importance on residential ratepayers. But when it comes to energy efficiency, all consumer sectors should be involved. Commercial buildings provide a unique and essential opportunity to integrate and expand the benefits of energy efficiency programs. According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, commercial buildings used roughly 19% of the energy in the U.S. economy. This includes office and retail buildings, schools, health-care buildings, and lodging facilities.

The importance of energy efficiency in commercial buildings has been recognized locally and nationally. In February 2011, President Obama declared the Better Buildings Initiative, with the goal of making commercial and industrial buildings 20% more energy efficient by 2020. This matches a state effort adopted by the legislature in 2008 to increase efficiency in state-owned buildings by 20% by 2015.

With such growing opportunity and creative ambition, CUB is excited to be part of the discussion of how to make these plans reality. While the challenges of incorporating energy savings and retrofits into commercial buildings remain distinct from other types of buildings, we have seen potential in this area recognized by the growth of commercial efficiency programs in the past few years. More programs are seeking ways to address the concerns of occupants, building owners and building managers.

While there is potential for savings through energy efficiency in all commercial buildings, studies find that the largest potential remains in retrofitting existing buildings. A recent study released by the Pacific Northwest National Lab determined that the four main areas for the greatest energy efficiency savings are lighting, refrigeration, heating/cooling, and office equipment (especially computers). The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s latest report found that the “biggest energy efficiency gains were in commercial buildings and industrial facilities [which] indicates that the primary area of savings is shifting away from the pattern of recent years when the largest new savings were in residences, primarily through installation of more efficient lights.” With this information in mind, several states have been offering resources and financial incentives to help building owners, operators, and tenants.

So what are these programs? The City of Seattle started the Lighting Design Lab (LDL) in partnership with the Portland-based Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) to transform the lighting market by providing education and training. While the topics of luminaries, lamps, and ballasts may not be your favorite dinner-time subjects, the Commercial Lighting Specialists at the Design Lab provide detailed workshops and expertise related to these and all other lighting-related knowledge. Another key program of the LDL is workforce training, which works with new and mid-career professionals to provide tools that will serve the next generation of energy efficiency projects, highlighting the many benefits energy efficiency programs can contribute to our economy.

As need for data storage increases, so does the concern for the energy consumed by data centers. The energy efficiency of data centers have come to the forefront of the commercial efficiency discussion.. In Oregon, with attractive tax exemptions and relatively affordable energy costs, we are seeing more of these centers being developed locally. While data centers ensure years of Facebook status updates are kept safe, they also consume huge amounts of energy. Yet to the energy efficiency expert, this merely means opportunity to save. An innovative new project is under construction to create a data center 94% more efficient than the average one. Hewlett-Packard (HP) is working with the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on this project located in Colorado, dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy research. In addition to cutting-edge efficiency measures, one key feature is the reuse of waste heat to warm adjacent buildings in the complex.

While these two examples offer amazing services and models for the future of energy efficiency, we know there are many more projects to be seen in the next decade as demand for energy increases and costs of traditionally sourced energy become a challenge. If you are interested in continuing the discussion on energy efficiency and commercial buildings, please join us October 26th for our annual policy conference. An entire afternoon panel will be dedicated to this topic, with speakers and facilitators working on the forefront of this issue. We hope you will lend your voice.

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