Today, facility managers often operate buildings by responding to alarms and occupant complaints. Tomorrow (and increasingly today) they will manage continuously, improving occupant comfort and energy management strategically through automated, connected technologies.
Financial innovation offers one of the best hopes for scaling the clean energy industry. But that doesn’t mean inventing a whole new class of complex tradable securities. States and cities are already showing how well established conventional tools, such as bonds, can help clean-energy projects access low-cost, long-term capital markets. That’s the conclusion of a report,
The Johnson Controls Institute for Building Efficiency has been conducting the Energy Efficiency Indicator Study for three years in China and Australia. In 2013 Singapore was added. The first summary report on Asia reveals similarities and contracts between the three countries, and between Asia and other parts of the world. Respondents in Asia report that they are viewing and analyzing...
Laboratories and clean rooms at universities, research labs and pharmaceutical companies waste significant energy, largely because they often ventilate at rates far greater than needed to protect the people and processes inside. Several strategies can be applied to save energy while maintaining safety and process integrity. They include:
A bold plan released on August 8th tells how Australia can upgrade all its existing buildings – including homes – to achieve zero carbon emissions in 10 years, and at only a modest cost difference from business as usual over 30 years.
PACE finance programs allow property owners to pay for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and/or water efficiency projects through an additional assessment on their property tax bill over 5-20 years, depending on the lifespan of the equipment. There is no up-front cost to the building owner and the investment is immediately cash flow positive. If the property is sold, the benefit of the...
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing is a promising tool to help drive investment in building energy efficiency. We analyze what PACE programs are doing to attempt to maximize their appeal to building owners and financiers. Nascent PACE programs differ slightly in program design features. The issue brief ‘Setting the PACE’ by the Institute for Building...
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation created the Demand Response Availability Data System (DADS) to evaluate the performance of demand response programs being used to stabilize the grid or reduce high wholesale energy prices. From summer 2011 through summer 2012, NERC collected data on demand response events dispatched by grid operators, and the actual reduction of load or...
The theme at the Garrison Institute’s 2013 Climate, Mind and Behavior Symposium, “The Importance of Variation and Diversity in Sustainability and Climate Work,” examined how patterns of diversity in “opinions, attitudes, knowledge, behaviors, worldviews, social capital, networks, community, resources and other factors” affect efforts to combat climate change. Drawing...
Improving the energy efficiency of a building can result in gains in worker productivity in addition to generating energy cost savings. Salary expenses are generally a high proportion of a commercial entity’s costs. Even a small percentage gain in productivity, multiplied by the number of employees, can result in considerable savings. Comfort plays a key role in productivity.