News Brief

CBRE Experiments With One-Day Energy Reductions

On September 23, 2009, development company CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) joined with Brookfield Properties and ING Clarion Partners in a one-day pursuit of energy savings through building management across its portfolio.

The company reports that the effort resulted in 9.2% overall energy savings across 43 million square feet (4 million m2), prevented 138 tons of carbon emissions, and saved more than $26,500 in energy costs. CBRE worked with its tenants and building managers to implement energy-saving strategies not only at the building level but also with individual occupants.

Published October 30, 2009

Wendt, A. (2009, October 30). CBRE Experiments With One-Day Energy Reductions. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/newsbrief/cbre-experiments-one-day-energy-reductions

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Comments

November 10, 2009 - 4:49 am

Ethan, I just looked back at their press release, and those savings figures are for the single day (it isn't clear whether they take man-hours of preparation into account). According to CBRE, this would total $6.9 million in savings annually (36,000 tons of carbon).It looks like pretty simple stuff--turning back the thermostats by a degree, reducing fan speeds, and turning off lights. They also trained occupants, I believe.

It's not clear how they calculated the savings--whether this was taken from energy-monitoring equipment or modeled based on average usage data.

November 10, 2009 - 4:26 am

It's impressive that they were able to coordinate and move that fast (though I would be shocked if all the fixes were in place within 24 hrs.) but it's not clear how much effort it actually took to reveal $26,500 in savings.

Since their total cost of energy was only a few dollars per thousand-sq-ft during that period (assuming a relatively uniform cost per unit energy) it might have also been a much greater accomplishment - did they only count the value of savings during that one, Herculean day?

Of course, now I'm just guessing. Do you know how many person-hours were in the one-day pursuit? And do you know over what period (daily, annual, depreciated lifetime, etc.) the savings were calculated?