People are becoming more concerned about the cost of their commercial space and many companies are now looking beyond the base rent and wanting to ensure that the building they buy or lease is energy efficient. Many tenants today want to know what the total cost of their lease is going to be, and they seek to determine beforehand all of the pass through costs as part of their decision-making process. One such pass through cost is energy consumption, and given that energy can often be one of the most expensive costs in a commercial building, tenants are demanding energy efficiency reports from landlords. Thus, how do you know whether or not a commercial building is energy efficient?
Often an energy inefficient building will give you signs that there are problems if you know what to look for. Here are a few indicators that you might be in an energy inefficient building: you experience comfort problems often, when you walk through the building you can sense differences in the temperature, you notice doors staying open slightly or doors closing abruptly due to air pressure, you feel the air blowing from the ceiling diffusers, or you hear a noticeable noise in the air conditioning systems.
The true way to understand if your building is efficient is to perform a benchmark review of your facility costs and performance. Performing a benchmark review is one of the most important issues in facilities, yet it is typically neglected. Companies today are focusing on their core competence and as a result every property manager and facility manager should be aware of their benchmark costs and be continually looking for ways to push the benchmark lower and improve quality.
The practice of benchmarking can lead to increased comfort and energy savings, often representing savings of 0.50 cents to over $1.00 per square foot per year! The key components of energy to benchmark are the kWh and therms per square foot per year a facility is using. One energy metric is the EAP Energy Star Award level. The EAP has established Energy Star Award certification for buildings that operate at the top 2% in energy usage. That efficiency level is very easy to achieve and all commercial buildings should be able to operate at that level.
As an example let’s look at a common type of commercial building: an office building. Most typical office buildings have up to 10% of the space used for computer rooms and operate 6 days a week. In California an office building should operate about 17 kilowatt hours per square feet per year to be considered being an EPA Energy Star award level building. This assumes that the building is fully occupied, so if there are any vacant spaces, deduct that amount of square feet from the building total. To calculate your energy metric simply take the last 12 months of electrical consumption in kilowatt hours per month and total them for the year; then divide that amount by the conditioned square feet of your building and that will provide you with your consumption in kilowatt hours per square feet per year.
If your per square feet kilowatt hours per year are less than say 10% above 16-17 kilowatt hours per square feet per year, you might want to review your maintenance services as the problems might be simple adjustments of the building mechanical or lighting systems. If the gap between your usage and the EAP Energy Star award level is higher than that, an energy audit is the next step to solve your energy usage problems. I will discuss energy audits more in my next article.
