Uptown workers to be key players in green initiative

Envision Charlotte, which starts today, aims to trim energy use in uptown office buildings 20% by '16. By Bruce Henderson bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Friday, Oct. 28, 2011

An energy-saving campaign announced a year ago goes live today when dozens of interactive displays - scorecards of success blink on in building lobbies across uptown Charlotte. The first phase of the green initiative Envision Charlotte aims to trim energy use in uptown office buildings 20 percent by 2016. Financed by Duke Energy and two corporate partners, it's billed as the first effort of its type.

Energy efficiency typically starts with upgraded lighting, heating and cooling and insulation. Charlotte will initially take a softer, and possibly more challenging, approach: Raising the consciousness of 82,000 uptown workers.

An image of one of the interactive displays to be placed in 65 uptown office buildings. DUKE ENERGY

The 47-inch displays that go live in 35 buildings today, followed by 30 more buildings in coming months, will show uptown's total energy use in near-real time. The numbers will be compared with 2010's. "You can't manage what you can't measure," said Tom Shircliff, president-elect of the nonprofit Envision Charlotte board. Shircliff is co-founder of IntelligentBuildings, a real estate consulting firm. Energy data from newly installed smart meters will stream to the lobby displays, which also will offer energy calculators and tips. Workshops, social media and "energy champions" who come up with new ideas for their firms will supplement the displays. Each display will use about 240 watts of energy a year, equal to four 60-watt light bulbs. Technology company Cisco and Verizon Wireless each contributed about $1 million for energymanagement and data-streaming equipment, respectively. Organizers hope the Prius effect - high regard for going green - will take hold uptown. Building managers would use energy data to fine tune heating, cooling and lighting controls. Office workers would flip off light switches and copiers. "We want to make sure we listen to the marketplace about what resonates with them," said Vincent Davis, Duke's point person on the project. "I'm interested in learning what the market responds to."
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Duke hopes to recoup part of its $4.1 million investment through a state-approved energy efficiency pilot program. The program lets Duke recover the costs, and lost revenues, associated with energy-saving measures by adding a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour to nonresidential customer bills. Uptown energy use needs to drop 5 percent, due to behavioral changes alone, for Duke to recover its money. Building owners likely would have to invest in energy upgrades to reach the 20 percent goal, Davis said. It's technically simple, with little cost, to cut energy use in office buildings by 5 percent, says research compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Efficiency Strategy Project. But it's harder to motivate changes in habit. Building owners may see no point in spending on energy upgrades that will save money only for tenants. Office workers don't pay for their electricity so have nothing at stake. "Behavioral and operational change programs are incredibly challenging. It took three decades for recycling to catch on," said Elena Alschuler, an MIT graduate student who is writing her master's thesis on the Charlotte initiative. "I think they're doing a lot of the right things, but at the end of the day it's hard to get people to change their behavior about energy use, to care." Model for other cities? Organizers take heart that 96 percent of uptown's property owners and managers signed contracts to allow smart meters and interactive displays to be installed. Their energy data will remain confidential, and they aren't required to take specific actions. "It's staggering to get that number in commercial real estate, where it's hard to get people to agree on whether the sky is blue," Shircliff said. The pitch was that embracing efficiency can help stamp Charlotte, with its growing energy hub, as a good place to do business. Commercial buildings typically waste about 30 percent of the energy they buy, the Environmental Protection Agency says. "This whole idea is not just for sustainability or economic development - it's really putting the two together," Shircliff said. "We want to demonstrate that this is a more cost-efficient place to do business." Companies already are swapping ideas on best practices. Organizers hope the initiative will become a model for other cities and spread from uptown to Charlotte's suburbs. Energy-focused efforts are also under way in cities from Portland, Ore., to Brooklyn. Denver's Living City Block redevelopment project aims to transform two city blocks of small- to medium-sized buildings, most of them historic, into a model of sustainability. Its $5 million to $6 million energy-efficiency component intends to cut energy use by about half in two to three years.

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"When we came up with this idea and proposed it to the community, one of the big barriers to energy efficiency was that owners typically didn't have the time, resources or capital to do what needed to be done," said Chad Riley, director of finance and strategy. Living City Block offers a new approach. It will secure financing for the energy upgrades, relieving building owners of that debt, and oversee the work. The energy savings will repay the upgrade costs. "Once these models are proven, once the returns are quantified and verified, this is the new paradigm for real estate going forward," Riley said.

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