You can blame it on the economic meltdown, but the real estate industry has never been so actively engaged in changing its conventional perception. Suddenly, ‘going green’ is the mantra for real estate developers who are realizing that the best way to minimize their operating costs is by adopting a smarter, more sustainable approach. Asset managers with experience in making buildings energy efficient are being pooled from all across the globe by American businesses to show them how low occupancy levels can be withstood by decreasing energy expenditures.
Owners of existing buildings that cannot afford large-scale renovations are desperately seeking measures by collaborating with green designers/architects to help manipulate the existing structure into being more sustainable and energy efficient. Among the many approaches available, the simplest and most affordable involves a blend of monitoring and maintenance. This can be done independently by businesses without expensive, externally-hired resources.
Monitoring — It seems only natural that to begin a building’s move towards energy efficiency, it is imperative to evaluate the building’s performance. This can be done in various ways. The most common approach is to use a combination of energy management software that require entering readily available information into various fields in order to create a matrix of the building’s energy performance.
The EPA’s free online Energy Star Portfolio Manager is one such tool. It is comprehensive, incorporating factors such as energy costs, weatherization and building size. It can be used for comparing the building’s performance over a period in order to calculate the progress made in the recent past. The value of investing in retrofits is preached by many green analysts but few understand that it is essential to calculate the savings also made through smaller investments, such as new lighting controls or HVAC fixtures. The EPA’s energy software helps monitor these small changes in daily consumption of electricity, water and gas to quantify your savings.
Maintenance — Merely because you do not have the resources to retrofit a building to meet LEED certification standards, it does not mean that you can’t make minor, but important, changes to increase a building’s overall energy efficiency. Once you have calculated your energy expenditures, small maintenance benchmarks can be implemented over time to disperse the cost of an sustainability overhaul. Nominal maintenance-related expenditures go a long way to conserving energy and moving a building towards sustainability. Even predictable routine maintenance, such as checking the performance of roofing installations, circulating pipes, lighting fixtures and temperature sensors/thermostats, can go a long way to ensuring that energy resources aren’t being wasted.
