ENERGY STAR News:
Business and Industry Edition

Summer 2008

Choose an article

• ENERGY STAR Gains Momentum in Assisted Living Industry
• Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR in 2008
• EPA Celebrates Architects for Getting It Right from the Start
• EPA Voluntary Programs Join Forces to Launch a New Laboratory Benchmarking Initiative
• C&I Sector Reaches New Heights in Energy Management
• Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Issues ENERGY STAR School Challenge

ENERGY STAR Gains Momentum in Assisted Living Industry

Sunrise Senior Living Becomes an ENERGY STAR Partner

The assisted living sector has experienced tremendous growth over the past decade. Increasing by more than $20 billion per year, the industry is the fastest-growing sector in senior care. As a result, EPA has begun an effort called the ENERGY STAR Assisted Living Focus. EPA is currently reaching out to the assisted living industry to raise awareness of energy management and engage the industry in discussions to help EPA's ENERGY STAR program develop the tools and resources that will help assisted living facilities save energy and money.

In May, Clark Reed, Program Manager for the Healthcare Sector for ENERGY STAR, and Rick Werber, Vice President of Facilities Management at Sunrise Senior Living , co-presented "Putting Energy into Profits" at the Assisted Living Federation of America's (ALFA's) 2008 Annual Conference and Expo in Orlando, FL. The presenters provided an overview of the environmental and financial benefits of energy management, the tools and resources available through ENERGY STAR, and the strategies and opportunities available to assisted living facilities. Many who attended the presentation committed to participating in the ENERGY STAR Assisted Living Focus.

In addition to its leadership role at the ALFA conference, Sunrise Senior Living became an ENERGY STAR partner. It is the largest assisted living provider in the United States and has made huge strides in the past year toward addressing energy efficiency. The company's efforts have been acknowledged nationally. In fact, the Sunrise Energy Council was honored with an ALFA 2008 "Best of the Best" Award, which recognizes senior living companies for the most innovative operational excellence strategies in the past year.

To participate in the ENERGY STAR Assisted Living Focus, please contact ESHealthcare@icfi.com.

For more information on ENERGY STAR for Healthcare, visit www.energystar.gov/healthcare.

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Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR in 2008

New ENERGY STAR Campaign Presents Opportunity for Organizations to Make a Difference

Over the past 8 years, the ENERGY STAR Change a Light, Change the World campaign has helped more than 1.6 million Americans save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing at least one light with an ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). This Earth Day, EPA launched a new campaign: Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR. It builds on the success of the Change a Light campaign and will help consumers learn how to make other energy-saving improvements, both at home and at work, to help fight global warming.

Like its predecessor, the new campaign starts with a pledge. By taking the new ENERGY STAR Pledge, Americans can promise to replace at least one light with one that has earned the ENERGY STAR and even more, such as making their heating and cooling systems work more efficiently, enabling the power management features on computers and monitors, and looking for the ENERGY STAR when purchasing appliances and electronics. If every American household took and honored the ENERGY STAR Pledge, we would save more than $18 billion in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from more than 18 million cars.

Another similarity to the Change a Light campaign is its outreach to the community. Your business or organization can become a pledge driver and encourage employees, constituents, customers, and your community to take and honor the ENERGY STAR Pledge. Learn more about opportunities to become a pledge driver this fall for the expanded campaign by visiting the Participating Organizations section of the campaign Web page.

The new campaign has an engaging interactive feature, as well. Those who have already made energy-saving changes in their homes or workplaces are invited to share their stories for the opportunity to be featured on the ENERGY STAR Web site. It is hoped that these stories will inspire others to change the world by saving energy, saving money, and helping to fight global warming.

Learn more about the Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR campaign and take the ENERGY STAR Pledge.

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EPA Celebrates Architects for Getting It Right from the Start

Forty-Six Architecture Projects Honored for Achieving Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR at AIA Convention

EPA unveiled the newest group of architecture projects to achieve Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR—EPA’s mark designating buildings designed to be energy efficient and intended to perform as energy all-stars when operated—at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Convention in Boston, MA, on May 15. The class of 2008 includes 46 new building designs from 29 architecture firms in 19 states, an increase of more than 40 percent from 2007. To date, nearly 100 projects have achieved Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR.

The Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR designation recognizes commercial building projects that are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment through energy-efficient design. This year’s new projects are estimated to save 120 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions and $5 million in energy costs annually across 8 million square feet.

Several large building designs, including two projects for building designs in the 1 million square foot class, achieved Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR. Among them are Kendall/Heaton Architects’ South Station Office Tower in Boston, MA, and FXFOWLE’s 11 Times Square in New York City. In addition, 10 projects are intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 50 percent.

Commercial buildings and manufacturing plants are responsible for nearly half of the nation’s total energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming. Architects and their clients are in a unique position to have a long-term positive impact on the environment. Architects can design—and building owners can demand—buildings designed to be highly energy efficient, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To achieve Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR, architects use Target Finder, EPA’s online tool that rates the estimated energy use of building designs against the use of actual operating buildings. Projects that are estimated to have a rating of 75 or higher in Target Finder not only achieve Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR, they are intended to be among the nation’s top 25 percent of energy-efficient buildings, if they are built and operated as designed.

The firms whose projects achieved Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR in 2008 were recognized at a ceremony featuring Phil Giudice, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources; Robert W. Varney, EPA Region 1 Administrator; Marvin Malecha, AIA Fellow and AIA Vice President Elect; Andrew Goldberg, Senior Director of Federal Affairs, AIA; and Karen Butler, Director of EPA’s Commercial Building Design program.

To learn more about Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR, please visit the ENERGY STAR Commercial Building Design Web site.

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EPA Voluntary Programs Join Forces to Launch a New Laboratory Benchmarking Initiative

ENERGY STAR and Labs21 Working to Help Labs Reduce Energy Use

Laboratories are highly energy-intensive because of their high ventilation standards and other health and safety requirements. Consequently, the average lab uses significantly more energy per square foot than a typical office building. Because of their unique and intensive nature, the energy use of labs is difficult to characterize. Currently, the available national energy data is insufficient  to develop an energy performance rating for labs similar to the ratings provided for other commercial building types through the ENERGY STAR program. Because it is critical to provide feedback to laboratory owners on how their labs perform, EPA is combining the resources of two voluntary programs, ENERGY STAR and Laboratories for the 21st Century (Labs21), to build a more robust database and rating system for labs.

Labs21, a voluntary program sponsored by EPA, focuses on the energy and environmental performance of laboratories. Labs21 offers a number of technical resources to laboratory owners, including an online energy and environmental benchmarking tool. This tool enables users to make comparisons between facilities in the database using a variety of filtering criteria. While this tool provides a good start to assess performance, comparisons are limited to the number of facilities currently in the database. The goal of this initiative is to combine the interests of both ENERGY STAR and Labs21 partners to increase the number of facilities within the database. This may be the start of building a sufficient national database that would allow for the development of an energy performance rating for laboratories.

Participation by ENERGY STAR partners is essential to this initiative’s success. If you would like to see a rating for laboratories established, learn how you can get involved.

For more information, contact Walt Tunnessen, ENERGY STAR Industrial Sector Manager, at Tunnessen.walt@epa.gov.

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C&I Sector Reaches New Heights in Energy Management

ENERGY STAR Snapshot Highlights Buildings' Successes

Commercial and industrial (C&I) buildings are responsible for nearly half of our nation’s emissions of greenhouse gases and represent a great opportunity to save energy, save money, and protect the environment through increased energy efficiency. Recognizing this opportunity, organizations of all types are turning to ENERGY STAR for tools and resources to help in reducing energy use in buildings and industrial facilities. The ENERGY STAR C&I branch is growing faster than ever, with more organizations joining as ENERGY STAR Partners, more buildings benchmarking energy use in Portfolio Manager, and more buildings and plants achieving top levels of performance and earning the ENERGY STAR. We are proud to share the branch’s accomplishments with all of our partners through the recently released ENERGY STAR Snapshot: Measuring Progress in the Commercial and Industrial Sectors . New issues of the Snapshot will be published every six months. We hope you’ll enjoy learning about the larger accomplishments of the branch, and EPA thanks you for your continued efforts.

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Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Issues ENERGY STAR School Challenge

One Hundred Wisconsin School Districts Asked to Reduce Their Energy Use by 10 Percent or More

In April 2008, Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton issued the Wisconsin ENERGY STAR School Challenge , asking 100 school districts to become ENERGY STAR partners and reduce energy use by 10% or more across their building portfolios. “Wisconsin school districts facing endless increases in energy costs and sure losses owing to their aging building stock now have a no-risk opportunity to turn that around,” Lawton said. “We know that energy efficiency is a critical first step in addressing global climate change, and we see the ENERGY STAR Challenge as a great way to shrink our schools’ carbon footprint, improve conditions for work and study, and save taxpayers’ money. And requests to participate come in every day.” 

In just two months since the Lieutenant Governor issued the ENERGY STAR School Challenge, the number of Wisconsin school districts participating in ENERGY STAR has increased from 13 to 30 as of early July. Some Wisconsin school districts have already taken the lead in energy efficiency, reducing their energy use and redirecting the funds from avoided energy costs to the classroom. Two Wisconsin school districts—Whitefish Bay School District and West Allis-West Milwaukee School District—have been recognized as ENERGY STAR Leaders for a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency district-wide. These energy-saving efforts have resulted in media coverage throughout the state, helping to raise awareness of the benefits of energy efficiency.

School districts participating in the Lieutenant Governor’s ENERGY STAR School Challenge agree to measure and track energy performance using EPA’s online energy management tool, Portfolio Manager. They will also set goals and plan improvements based on the ENERGY STAR Energy Management Guidelines. These school districts are teaching staff, students, and community members about energy efficiency. The Office of the Lieutenant Governor’s Web site connects Challenge participants to the ENERGY STAR program and other resources. It also provides testimonials and advice from Wisconsin school district energy managers.

To learn more about the ENERGY STAR Challenge, please visit energystar.gov/challenge. For more information about Wisconsin’s energy efforts, please visit ltgov.wisconsin.gov .

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