The Swig Company Uses Gridium to Tackle Ambitious Cross-Portfolio Energy Reduction Targets

The Swig Company leverages Gridium to tackle energy usage from every angle across their 2.6M SF of California buildings.

The Swig Company (Swig) began in 1936, when Benjamin Swig acquired the iconic Fairmont San Francisco hotel. Swig remains a family-owned business today, delivering human-centric environments to urban office and multi-family properties. The Swig family has long championed sustainability across their portfolio; 92% of Swig’s square footage under management is LEED certified, and the average ENERGY STAR score across the portfolio in 2023 was 76. In 2023, Swig took the next big step in their sustainability journey: publicly committing to reduce market-based Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions 50% from 2018 totals by 2030, and 100% by 2040. 

“Sustainability is always something we’ve tried to implement in our buildings in various ways. As we’ve continued to improve them—strive for better ENERGY STAR scores, for ways to operate more efficiently—it’s become ingrained in what we do every day.”  – Julie Zaoui, Assistant Vice President, Innovation and Asset Management

“As soon as we had it running, the Gridium platform identified opportunities for quick and cost-free changes that lowered energy use at our flagship building. And this was before we remodeled it, when it still had a fair bit of legacy equipment.”  – Phillip Hernandez. Sr. Operations Manager

Challenge

Even before Swig laid out its ambitious 2030 and 2040 emissions targets, they wanted a better understanding of their buildings’ energy usage without huge time input. “Controlling energy use is a constant challenge in commercial real estate,” explained Phillip Hernandez, who’s been Senior Operations Manager at Swig since 2011. “We have obligations to tenants, which always come first and often take every bit of our chief engineers’ days. It’s not always easy to step back and contemplate quick ways to reduce usage without inconveniencing our tenants.”

Swig also wanted a more streamlined budgeting process. “Building a utility budget is always challenging,” said Julie Zaoui, Swig’s Assistant Vice President of Innovation and Asset Management. “It takes a long time and is hard to get right. It’s affected by everything from occupancy to the market to what’s going on in the world.” Zaoui was building annual budgets from scratch, and despite putting in the time, there were simply too many variables to do it with high fidelity.

The Mills Building, San Francisco, CA | Source: The Swig Company

Approach

Swig launched Gridium at their flagship property—the historic Mills building, a designated historical landmark and the last remaining ‘Chicago school’ building on the West Coast. With early successes identifying savings opportunities, Swig rolled out the platform at its California portfolio of properties over the next several years. Alongside the platform’s savings opportunities, Gridium’s energy advisors stepped up to help the Swig team ensure each building across the portfolio was on the optimal tariff given occupancy, upgrades and available rates. “It’s nice to have a partner like Gridium who understands the markets and rate schedules,” said Zaoui. “To have that information distilled down into a couple points is really helpful.” 

Gridium and Swig are now stepping beyond the platform to find zero-cost ways of financing large energy efficiency upgrades. Their first target: an LED-upgrade project across the 470,000SF Mills Building. Through Gridium’s Alpha program, Swig won’t have to pay contractors and retailers to make the upgrades. Instead the utility—PG&E—will front the cost. They’ll then calculate the energy bill savings from the project and build that cost back into utility bills until the project cost has been covered. The result is a win for everybody: Swig lowers their carbon intensity at no cost, PG&E takes a step towards hitting its emissions reductions goals at no cost, and the only difference tenants see in their energy bills is lower bills when the project is paid off.

“When we first saw the Gridium platform, we thought it looked great. How good would it be to get an email every Monday telling us where the high points were in our usage, and if anything was on over the weekend.”  – Julie Zaoui, Assistant Vice President, Innovation and Asset Management

Results

Over the course of the partnership, the Gridium platform has helped Swig save energy and cost through more efficient operations alone, ranging from staggered start-ups and shut-downs to avoiding weekend and holiday runtimes. As measured by Gridium’s analytics platform, Swig saved $110,000 in electricity costs in 2023 through operational and demand management throughout the portfolio. Gridium’s energy advisors have saved Swig another $42,000 per year through rate optimization, and the Gridium Alpha project is expected to help them reduce energy cost by 24% at the Mills Building through the lighting retrofit.

The Mills Building Lobby, San Francisco, CA | Source: The Swig Company

None of that accounts for the team time that’s saved through Gridium. “When I first started using the Gridium budgeting tool I was like ‘this feels too easy. This should’ve taken me more time!” recalled Zaoui. From hours building spreadsheets to a few minutes checking numbers, Zaoui is able to budget with higher confidence at a much faster pace. 

Gridium’s advisory team is also helping Swig power their buildings using renewable energy without breaking the bank. Each year, Gridium helps Swig enter the direct access electricity lottery for any building that isn’t already sourcing power from a direct access provider. Selected buildings can switch from their utility’s power mix to a provider that sources more renewable energy. In some territories, that renewable power is still considerably more expensive than fossil fuel power. But as of January 1st, 2024, four of Swig’s northern California based PG&E properties were voluntarily converted to 100% renewables. Two additional SF-based direct access buildings will convert to 100% renewable by the end of 2024 were all transferred to 100% renewables, which they’re hoping will help propel them towards their emissions reduction targets. 

6300 Wilshire Lobby, Los Angeles, CA | Source: Swig Company

From daily operations and annual budgeting to power sourcing and efficiency upgrades, the combination of attention to detail and consistency Gridium has brought to Swig’s operations have helped position Swig to be a leader in California sustainable CRE. 

“I’ve overseen very big buildings and small buildings. Oftentimes in small buildings it’s easy to feel overlooked as a customer; I’ve never felt that way with Gridium. Their relationship management with their customers is amazing, especially given technology and how fast everyone’s moving. They’ve always got time for me.”  – Julie Zaoui, Assistant Vice President, Innovation and Asset Management