What does it take to earn top honors from the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), among 151 North American Real Estate companies, spanning all asset classes? How do you land the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts’ award for superior sustainability practices in the office sector? And how could you add an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award to the list, all in the same year? Kilroy Realty Corporation pulled it off, and their 2014 Sustainability Report has the details.
While the awards are certainly worth writing home about, we find the data fascinating (and that’s not just because Kilroy has used our meter data analytics software since 2012). Context here is helpful–Kilroy’s targets include:
- Reduce energy use by 10% from 2010 consumption levels by 2015
- Reduce water use by 10% from 2012 consumption levels by 2017
- Engage tenants to reduce their environmental impact through regular communication and action-oriented programs
Water reduction strategies and technologies will be a focus in 2015.
On the energy consumption front, Kilroy reduced its energy use by another 2% across the entire portfolio in 2014, and is on track to hit its target by the end of 2015. Reducing water use has proven more difficult–driven, in part, by the economics of cheap water. Nevertheless, the portfolio achieved a 1.8% reduction in water use in 2014. The Kilroy team has engaged 100% of their tenants in 2014 on topics including energy efficiency and water consumption, electric car charging, and recycling programs.
Once upon a time, asset and property managers could get away with considering tenant engagement as simply responding to hot and cold calls. Today, Kilroy’s tenant engagement strategy spans ENERGY STAR Tenant Appreciation Events, quarterly memos, Earth Day, electric car charging station deployments, web-based Tenant Handbooks, and social media. Kilroy is also taking the next step forward with Green Leasing, and in 2014 started including language in every new lease that aligns tenant and landlord interests on energy, water, and waste efficiency. This strong tenant engagement has led to further deployment of Demand Response (DR) programs (2.7 million more SF added in 2014).
DR optimization is one way Kilroy uses Gridium’s Snapmeter software: our Monday morning load profile analysis emails predict the days when a building is likely to set its peak demand charge for the current billing period. On those days, Kilroy’s building operators will initiate the energy management strategies they’ve put in place for DR event days. Additionally, Snapmeter’s machine learning algorithms spot wasteful energy use patterns such as elevated baseloads, inefficient startup/shutdown patterns, and weekend/holiday/off-hours use.
Our congratulations go out to the entire Kilroy team for their excellent work in 2014. If you have any questions about the ways our software tools can help your building run more effectively, please get in touch.
