In fact, existing commercial buildings that are less than 50,000 square feet make up 95 percent of total buildings in the country, according to Jeana Wiser, resilient communities manager for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s (NTHP’s) Preservation Green Lab in Washington, D.C. Thankfully, the Green Lab exists to meet the needs of this significant, yet neglected market and help ease the burden of data collection and monitoring through its America Saves program.
“This is an overlooked or underserved market, especially as it relates to energy efficiency,” Wiser says. “I think taking advantage of any existing data that’s out there to really try to get a grasp on this segment of the market as it relates to energy performance is really important, and that’s what we’re doing with America Saves.”
Although the industry is trying to figure out how to standardize the transference of utility data to third parties for analysis, Wiser says for building owners who participate (free of charge) in the America Saves program, the Green Lab can access their energy data from the utility company to collect and analyze it to identify areas of concern and opportunity—taking the burden off of small building owners.
“That allows us to give them a baseline and a good understanding about where their biggest users of energy would lie within their building,” Wiser adds. “Then, [we can] also identify those big areas of opportunity where they would want to spend their time and attention thinking about a retrofit in certain categories based on end use. We do the initial homework for them.”
Similarly, the U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, in partnership with Architecture2030, announced earlier this year the creation of the AIA 2030 Design Data Exchange (DDx), an online monitoring, reporting and research tool for architecture firms participating in the AIA 2030 Commitment program. This online portal provides committed firms with access to their own unique database where they can submit yearly project data, compare projects with similar submissions from other committed firms and track energy performance across their organization with ease.
Global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK is among the organizations that has signed on to the 2030 Commitment and is using the DDx site to track performance of its projects with very promising results to date, according to Anica Landreneau, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, director of sustainable consulting in HOK’s Washington office.
“This is the first year we’re submitting our data into this online platform,” Landreneau explains. “What’s really helpful is it’s putting our buildings in context, either against our peer buildings within town or up in the larger industry.” Having access to this kind of data has proven extremely valuable, especially in cases where a client or project team assumes they’ve hit a ceiling in terms of energy efficiency, which can then be verified or challenged based on information gleaned from DOE’s site.
“That’s a big shift on the design side in just positioning these buildings because we now have a lot more information to benchmark in real time,” Landreneau says. “You can put this in at any time, not just once a year then wait several months to get feedback about how you’re doing compared to the rest of the industry. That’s pretty interesting.”
Access to this kind of benchmarking pays off on large and small scales, as the Green Lab is proving with research and studies that use data to demonstrate the value of reusing existing buildings within the context of cities. Working with the Urban Land Institute, the Green Lab’s Partnership for Building Reuse Program brings together community groups, real-estate developers, and civic leaders to make it easier to reuse and retrofit vacant and blighted properties.
According to Mike Powe, associate director of research for Preservation Green Lab, the goal of the program is “to basically understand what’s preventing us from reusing more buildings—what’s stopping or slowing building reuse at a larger scale.” Using data from the NTHP’s groundbreaking 2014 “Older, Smaller, Better” study, the Green Lab has been able to demonstrate the indispensable role older buildings play in the health and vitality of cities, such as Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia, for example.