Teach your Old Building New Tricks Carbon Lighthouse Profitable Carbon Neutral Buildings: A Palo Alto Case study Emma Bassein Palo Alto Utilities Facility Managers Meeting August 16 th 2012

Carbon Lighthouse Bias Disclaimer: Carbon Lighthouse makes existing buildings carbon neutral. We also make them more profitable and we think those are both really important for solving climate change.

Carbon Lighthouse About Carbon Lighthouse Driving environmental change by making it easy for buildings to reduce energy use, become carbon neutral, and gain recognition 80+ projects completed: $23+ million in utility bill savings; 138+ million lbs of CO 2 reductions identified

Carbon Lighthouse The Importance of Carbon Neutral Leadership Climate change is already impacting global weather patterns Energy use in buildings is responsible for a lot of it and can be a rapid mitigation strategy (~17% of US emissions from commercial buildings, 28% from industrials) Existing buildings are most of the buildings we have and the ones we have now will be a lot of the same ones we have in 20 years

Carbon Lighthouse Great! Energy Efficiency to the Rescue Efficiency is (often) a negative cost solution for reducing climate emissions How far can it go and can we get our existing buildings to carbon neutral onsite? Why are RECs, allowances or offsets needed?

Carbon Lighthouse “Improving energy efficiency in buildings and appliances: While this category of abatement options would cost the least from a societal point of view, persistent barriers to market efficiency will need to be overcome.”

Carbon Lighthouse So what is REALLY possible? … Let’s play with some numbers

Carbon Lighthouse Thought experiment What if we brought all our buildings up to a 75 Energy Star score? What about 100?(LEED EB minimum threshold is a 67, Energy Star Certification starts at 75) Note: rough estimate based on office btu/sqft 19% Savings 68% Savings 2003

Carbon Lighthouse What Can We Actually Work With To Get Those Savings? Orientation, % Fenestration Shell materials HVAC system design HVAC Equipment Controls, commissioning Lighting Design Lighting technology New construction ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓ Gut Rehab ?? ✓✓✓✓ Retrofit ? ✓ ? ✓

Carbon Lighthouse Some Real Data from the Field

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University The Stats: Built in ,000 sqft plus underground parking Densely filled multi-tenant office Starting Energy Star score of 76 Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Water-Cooled heat pump system 75 heat pumps Condenser water pumps Cooling tower fan Gas boiler Lighting Server and other plug loads Elevator Garage exhaust Other considerations: Shell opportunities Renewables Health/safety/maintenance

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Water-Cooled heat pump system 75 heat pumps Heat pumps are self-contained and pretty efficient. Opportunities: Scheduled correctly Check temp set points Replace unit if old/inefficient/broken Change condenser water temp (we will revisit this) Already controlled appropriately through a BMS, all systems functioning

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Water-Cooled heat pump system Condenser water pump This pump was scheduled on 24/7 because the facility and maintenance incorrectly believed that it was serving the server room on the 1 st floor. Annual Savings: 27,800 kWh$3,730 4% of Btu use

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Water-Cooled heat pump system Cooling tower fan There were two big opportunities with the cooling tower: 1.The fan was usually cycling to meet its set point 2.The set point was a static temperature Savings

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Annual Savings: 16,597 kWh $2, % of Btu use Two changes: Variable frequency drive on the cooling tower fan Variable set point for the condenser water temperature Bonus: Cooling tower spray fan identified as near failure and replaced.

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Water-Cooled heat pump system Gas boiler Not much to do here, the building was virtually never in heating mode because of outside temperature and internal loads.

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Lighting The lighting was already very efficient throughout the building, but we caught some stragglers. *Took advantage of CPAU incentives! Annual Savings: 5,154 kWh $ % of Btu use Twenty-one 35W MR16s to 9W LED Thirty-two 60W Incandescent to 15CFL Six first generation 2 lamp 32W Utubes to 2 lamp 17W fluorescents Three 34W T12 Lamps/ballasts replaced with two 32W T8

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Servers and other plug load Not under the control of the management, but we still took a look. Several companies were very computer heavy, but equipment was pretty new with sleep modes enabled HVAC seemed appropriate Frequent turn over of tenants makes long term strategies difficult

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Elevator Not much to do here, the elevator is rarely used and energy retrofit opportunities in modern buildings are scarce

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Key Energy Consuming Equipment: Garage Exhaust Big opportunity! The garage fans were running 24/7 at maximum capacity. Code allows for demand control ventilation based on CO sensors. Installed VFDs on garage fans Installed 3 CO sensors throughout the garage Programed the fans to run based on code requirements Annual Savings: 34,309 kWh $4, % of Btu use

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Other Considerations: Shell upgrades Not much to do New building with good quality materials and appropriate level of fenestration Internal shades on the west facing windows

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Other Considerations: Renewables Opportunity for solar 18.5kW maximizes available roof space Reduced to under a 5 year payback by City of Palo Alto incentives. Estimated incentive: $33k Annual Savings: 23,711 kWh $3, % of Btu use

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Ok, so what does that get us? Pump Scheduling:4%$3,730 Cooling tower controls:2.4%$2,224 Lighting:0.7%$ 691 Garage DCV:4.9%$4,597 Solar3.4%$3,352 Total Annual Reduction:15.5%$14,594 New Projected Energy Star Score 85 (compared to 76) Carbon Footprint Left84.5%

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University All Efficiency measures talked about ($50K) Solar PV ($96K) If solar thermal could replace all gas Major replacement of equipment/HVAC redesign Maybe achievable with gut rehab shell improvements

Carbon Lighthouse Case Study: 101 University Some take aways: The building didn’t know that any of these opportunities existed Each building is different and it takes a lot of on the ground data to find what will be cost effective at a given site Carbon Neutral can be profitable! The owner is getting an IRR of over 24% including all carbon offsets

Carbon Lighthouse Carbon Offsets RECs, Carbon Offsets or Allowances can fill the gap while creating the right internal motivation for the financial team Sets up the long term goal to continue to seek cost reducing efficiency and increases the internal cost effectiveness

Carbon Lighthouse Where to Get Them Palo Alto offers a Green Power option that is entirely from renewables Carbon Lighthouse recommends retiring carbon allowances from strictly enforced, domestic, mandatory carbon markets (RGGI, AB32) Reputable offset brokers (California Climate Offset Registry, Terrapass, etc.) NOTE: Palo Alto has a goal of completely carbon neutral grid energy, so you might not have to worry about this part

Carbon Lighthouse The result!

Carbon Lighthouse 870 Market Street, Suite 1011 San Francisco, CA It’s 10pm, Do you know what Your Building is doing? Carbon Lighthouse Questions?