Here’s a quick run-down of several energy-efficient projects cited in the article.

Projects at Fairmont Waterfront hotel include a heat-recovery system to preheat incoming city water using heat captured from the hotel’s water system. It saves an estimated 305,380 kilowatt-hours (1,100 GJ) per year and $12,000 per year. Estimated payback is in two years.

In a separate article, Fairmont set a corporate commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20 percent from its 2006 levels by 2013.

The conference was opened by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, C. Donald Babers, Regional Administrator for Region VI, U.S. HUD and Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman.

Smitherman provided some interesting Texas/ERCOT stats:

+ 1.7 million smart meters are installed as of July 31
+ 6 million will be installed by 2013
+ 9300 megawatts from wind in ERCOT footprint (900 MW more in Texas but out of ERCOT footprint)
+ 18,500 megawatts from wind in ERCOT planned by 2013 (that would be 20-25% of load)
+ There is a proposed rule for NON-WIND renewable target of 500 MW (most likely, solar)

From Dub Taylor of the State Energy Conservation Office, he provided this data of the fuel mix in Electricity in Texas for 2009:
+ Natural Gas 51%
+ Coal 34%
+ Nuclear 10%
+ Renewables (basically wind) 4%

One of the highlights of the conference, of which there were many, was the presentation by the new City of Houston Sustainablity Director, Laura Spanjian (we touched on Spanjian earlier this month on this blog here), summarizing the Houston’s achievements in sustainable growth. In March of this year the City of Houston was recognized for being ranked sixth on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 list of cities with the most energy efficient buildings.

Ms. Spanjian woke the crowd up after lunch with an inspired delivery of City of Houston accomplishments.

Solar and Wind initiatives include: A 100KW solar system at George R. Brown Convention Center funded jointly by the Houston Endowment ($850k), BP ($100k) and CenterPoint ($50k) and the purchase of 2 billion kwh (50 MW of power) from Texas Wind Farms over the next 5 years. The EPA ranks the City of Houston as the #1 in terms of renewable energy purchased by a municipality.

Other energy efficiency initiatives include the LED traffic lights at 2,000 intersections which have a cost savings of $3.6M per year, the LED Streetlight Pilot Project which are up to 50% more energy efficient and 755 hybrid vehicles (the 3rd largest municipal fleet in the country). It should also be noted METRO is purchasing is purchasing 100 hybrid buses a year and will have 449 in total by 2011.

Houston is “LEED”ing the way for all new construction, as mandated in 2004, and the Looscan Library was the City’s first LEED Certified building with a LEED Gold on Central Permitting Center and Fire Station 90 not far behind. Add to all of this the Residential Program for kWh reductions, the Weatherization Program, improving air quality using MAAM and DIAL technologies and Houston is well on its way to leading the nation in energy strategies.

We applaud the new Mayor Parker and her selection of Laura Spanjian as Sustainability Director.

It was a great presentation!

By the way, the event was held at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on UT’s campus. The facility is LEED Gold.

One caveat: the survey was of only 48 people who are in charge of sustainability for their companies. I think that sample size is too small. And, given these folks’ role in the organization, I am afraid their viewpoint is a bit slanted so to speak. But there are lessons to be learned.

My takeaways included:

+ “The green workforce is the general workforce.” – they believed that sustainability would be integrated into existing roles and job descriptions as a prerequisite for employability: Jobs in the future, respondents thought, will require people to bring a certain basic level of familiarity with sustainability issues and competence in skills related to sustainability to the table.

Interesting. I’ve never heard it put quite that way, but I agree with the premise wholeheartedly.

+ “Sustainable products can be competitive – with the right marketplace approach.”

Thumbs up from me.

+ “Sustainability’s bottom-line results might be better if you broaden your view of ROI.” – But to improve its performance, a company needs to do more than reap an immediate financial ROI on its sustainability initiatives. It also needs to consider managing risk, building its brand and reputation, complying with regulatory requirements, and investing in developing future products and services that will be viable in a world where sustainability plays a greater role in driving buying decisions.

There are definitely qualitative benefits that should be considered that are difficult to incllude in your CFO’s spreadsheet.

+ Primary owner of sustainability efforts? COO was 6%, Head of Environmental Health and Safety 6%, Board of Directors 4%, CFO 2%, other = 91%.

Two things: 1) It’s odd that Deloitte did not list Chief Sustainability Officer as one of the options (they were part of the others), and 2) quite obviously the multiple people selected as an owner leads to a lack of accountability, which is not good for results.

+ There is a clear lack of understanding between these sustainability owners and the ARRA funds that are available to them.

That’s bad news for policy makers and even worse news for those heading up these sustainability efforts. I would have guessed the sustainability folks would have been more aggressive in understanding the grants, tax credits, tax deductions, and rebates that are available to them and their projects.

+ Energy efficiency was the across-the-board winner as the most important environmental issue to the business.

EE rated 9 on a scale from 1 to 10 in importance and was the leader in every business sector. Wow, that’s impressive and surprising at the same time. Efficiency does not get near the publicity as other answers like alternative energy and transportation. Someone has been listening and reading this blog.

David Roth of gbNYC (Green Building in NYC) nails it with “What happened at 375 Hudson is a smashing success, but it’s also really nothing more than a pretty down-the-middle retrofit done well. It’s tough to imagine a better advertisement for green commercial retrofits than that.”

Roth continues, “This is common-sense stuff, not a revolutionary leap forward. It’s low-flow fixtures and improving fixtures, not slapping on some solar panels and hoisting a wind turbine. It is, in short, a basic green retrofit — one that happens to grade very highly in terms of LEED points and the sort of building performance metrics Energy Star measures, but not one that would be beyond the reach of most Manhattan office buildings. Which, in a way, is what makes it most extraordinary.”

Now you see why I said I love this story.

From the official press release, here are the main items which earned the LEED GOLD:

+ reduced electricity consumption by nearly 110,000 kWh per year by making changes to the HVAC and mechanical systems and installing variable frequency drives on the cooling tower fans;
+ reduced steam consumption by improving heat exchangers and making other HVAC improvements that reduced heating demand;
+ reduced annual water consumption by 1 million gallons by replacing original restroom fixtures with low flow aerators and new water closets;
+ adopted an expanded recycling program that encompassed not only office paper and waste, but batteries, electronic waste and construction debris;
+ implemented a building-wide Green Cleaning policy focusing on improving air quality and ensuring the purchase of sustainable cleaning and janitorial paper supplies.

That’s as basic as it gets…Down the middle of the fairway stuff…things that every building should do, whether they want a LEED plaque or not.

Golf clap for Tishman Speyer and main tenants Saatchi & Saatchi, Penguin Group, and Turner Construction.

Andy Smith, our Chief Engineering Officer, and Bobby Bragg, our President, will lead the discussion.

Here is the complete release: CREW DALLAS TO LEARN ABOUT GREENING EXISTING BUILDINGS.

Here is the skinny:

Topic: “Cost Effective Strategies for Greening Existing Buildings”
When: 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, August 18
Where: Park City Club, 5956 Sherry Lane (Dallas, Texas)
Cost: $50 for pre-registered guests and $55 for walk-ins.

For more information, contact Kim Hopkins at 214/890-6490 or email khopkins@crew-dallas.org.

ABOUT CREW DALLAS

CREW Dallas (Commercial Real Estate Women) is comprised of more than 300 commercial real estate professionals affiliated nationally through membership in the CREW Network. Now celebrating its 30th Anniversary, the non-profit organization provides opportunities for networking, education, leadership development and civic/philanthropic involvement. CREW Dallas promotes the highest standards of ethics and integrity and seeks to positively influence the direction of Dallas. For more information, visit www.crew-dallas.org.

Those four are San Antonio, Austin, Houston and El Paso. The CenTex cities of Austin and San Antonio were widely regarded as the most likely candidates as Austin already is the most progressive with its green building codes and much of the push to pass the state law came out of San Antonio.

Houston, the “Oil Capital of the World”, has a recently appointed Director of Sustainability, Laura Spanjian, and she told the Texas Tribune that her city was “not going to wait” for the PACE problems to get solved. “We have set aside funds to help commercial property owners with the upfront costs of energy efficiency improvements,” she said in an e-mail. “We’re going to find another model in the short-term while the issues with PACE are being worked out.”

Kudos to Ms. Spanjian on her aggressive approach.

*******

If you have missed some of the prior discussion on PACE on this blog, I recommend the following reading:

The Case for and the Concerns of PACE Financing

What is PACE Financing?

PACE 101 video

Initially, we just explained what it actually is back in February, (What is PACE financing?).

And there is this YouTube video which does some explaining in PACE 101.

We also touched on the new Florida law that was enacted just last month, and also touched on some of the obstacles around PACE spreading.

If you forgot or missed the earlier posts on what PACE financing is, it is simply a program that creates local bond financing districts, which then lend back capital to building and homeowners to fund energy retrofit projects. Owners repay the loan through their property tax bills, typically over a 15- to 20-year term.

Randyl Drummer also recently penned (can you still use that verb in this virtual world?) his own case for PACE financing. Drummer does a solid job touching on not only the promise but also the drawbacks of the plan.

Here are some of Drummer’s high points:

“The opportunities are really tremendous from an energy retrofit perspective,” Florida State House Majority Leader Adam Hasner said. “A lot of the hesitation from building owners comes from the upstream expenses and not wanting to make those expenditures. This type of financing can help alleviate some of those concerns and convince owners to make these types of investments, which are going to be cost effective as well as energy efficient in the long run.”

I love this quote from Hasner too: “It will take time to educate people. We’re still early in the first quarter of a four-quarter game. Everyone is very quick to recognize the innovations in technology in energy efficiency and new technologies. But PACE is really about an innovation in financing. It can be a very useful financial tool for commercial property owners to complete energy efficiency projects that will help them save money.”

Drummer cites a new Pike Research Report which says PACE will continue to grow in popularity in the U.S., with investment in PACE financing for commercial buildings totaling a projected $2.5 billion annually by 2015.

“Until now, private buildings such as these have had minimal access to financing for energy retrofits,” the Pike report said.

Some of the concerns are, according the Drummer’s article:

+ Potential buyers and lending institutions may be wary of existing PACE liens, including whether lenders may one day restrict the ability to tack significant energy projects onto the property tax bill (because they hold superior lien positions to the bank’s debt)

+ The lack of clarity in how GAAP treats (loan or as a lien) on a company’s balance sheet

+ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have expressed concern about how the agencies will be repaid if homeowners participating in PACE later default on their mortgages. (Boulder County, CO., canceled its PACE program for residential, although its commercial program is still active.)

In closing, despite the concerns noted about, Drummer quotes Clean Fund CEO John Kinney, “Frankly, taking an inefficient building and making it more efficient is much more valuable than taking a new building that is already highly efficient and simply certifying that it is in fact, highly efficient.”

Kudos, Mr. Kinney, you get it.

And there are just so many more existing buildings than new buildings, that our ability to impact the environment and our bottom line is staggering.

That is Green Squared’s tagline if you didn’t know.

In a new healthcare study reported by FMLink, nearly four out of five (79%) hospitals surveyed cited cost savings as the top reason their facilities are committed to environmentally sustainable operations.

Also, very interestingly, at least to me, nearly 70% of the respondents say they measure their energy savings and half (50%) conduct energy audits. 41% say their facilities measure water savings.

Google initially announced its intentions with PowerMeter in early 2009.

Cisco has also recently announced its intentions to be in the Home Energy Management space.

Below is a picture of the Cisco product.

Athens spent 10 years as an administrator with the City of Seattle’s sustainability programs, where she led policy development efforts. Her 25 years of experience also include time spent as a board member of the U.S. Green Building Council and the International Green Building Certification Institute.

Hat tip to Strategic Partnerships out of Austin for this heads up.