GOING GREEN – WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Is it just window dressing or will we save money? Make money? Get or keep tenants?
How do we analyze and choose?
The tenants ultimately pay all utility cost, what benefit do we get?
Should we go LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design)? GBI (Green Building Initiative)?
Where and how do I pick what will work for me?
Google
What is “green”? Energy Savings? Sustainable? Carbon neutral?
Does more insulation in the roof or walls always help?
Is a white roof always better?
What glazing is cost effective?
Up lighting, down lighting, all around lighting. What makes sense?
Is there more or less maintenance?
Does Energy Star affect me?
Are there tax credits?
Are there utility rebates?
Do tenants care?
We will be glad to discuss options that will help you make effective decisions regarding “green” choices including realistic cost and return on investment information.
We consult on everything from graduated “How do we start to save energy and money?” plans and full building commissioning to full building LEEDS-EB, carbon neutral, and, “green” building exteriors including roofs, walls, windows, doors, and atria.
As one minor example we can help you to provide cost (capital, ongoing, and cost of ownership over the time period) scenarios for items such as roof replacements that show different options (recover, tear-off, ballasted, white, colored, additional insulation, warranty, attachment types, carbon impact, waste impact, and so on) that let you provide hard meaningful data for each situation. Staying with the roof example this eliminates the generic assumptions such as white is always the lowest operating cost, tear-off always costs more, a warranty is a warranty, maintenance requirements are all the same, to name a few that lead to more costly, less earth friendly decisions.
Cutting to the quick, we evaluate each situation, the buildings/components involved, evaluate the correct options in depth, present a range of the best ones with full impact and cost analysis, and, present other meaningful decision making information. Choices are then made based upon each situations unique mixture of economic, social, geographic, ownership, and investor/corporate factors. If you wish, we can help you develop “Best Practices” evaluation questionnaires and guidelines for your staff to allow quick “snapshot” analyses.