California blackouts have businesspeople thinking about energy conservation again

Concern sparks new interest in Wisconsin Green Building Alliance
Green building is a trend that will pick up steam, particularly as the cost of heating energy rises in Wisconsin. At least that’s what Connie Lindholm, director of the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance (WGBA), thinks.
“Rolling blackouts in California have people scared,” Lindholm said. “A lot more people want to join our organization. We’re seeing 40 to 50 people at our breakfast meetings. We had an energy crisis in the 1970s – and now we’ll find out if we learned anything.”
According to figures released by the Wisconsin Energy Bureau, compared to last year, the price of heating oil has increased 15.6 cents per gallon, or 13.4%, while the LP price has increased 41 cents per gallon, or 40.2%. Compared to prices in March, the end of last year’s heating season, heating oil prices are up 14.1 cents per gallon or 11.9%, and LP prices are up 41.8 cents per gallon or 41.3%.
Of particular concern to businesses is the rising cost of natural gas. The price per million BTU of natural gas to residential customers for the month of February was 56.8% higher than the previous February.
Jim Mapp of the Wisconsin Energy Bureau, which is part of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, said energy prices for businesses are lower than the prices for residences, which are most closely tracked. But the prices are still rising in equal measure.
“The average price in 1999 for natural gas was $6.12 per million BTUs, while for the commercial sector it was $4.35,” Mapp said. “The price for fuel oil for residential consumers in 1999 was $6.38 per million BTUs and $4.40 per million BTUs for commercial.”
Rising natural gas prices could hit the business sector hard, and even Federal Reserve Chairman Allen Greenspan said in December that the sudden rise in energy prices had an influence on what some are characterizing as a current economic downturn. According to 1999 data kept by the Wisconsin Energy Bureau, Wisconsin’s industrial sector used natural gas to the tune of 149 trillion BTUs, which accounts for 39% of natural gas used in the state. Meanwhile, the commercial sector used natural gas to generate 89 trillion BTUs, or 23% of the state’s natural gas. Overall, almost 150,000 businesses in the state rely on natural gas as a heating fuel.
The cost of electricity, however, is holding relatively firm, according to Mapp.
“In 1999, the average residential price was 7.32 cents per kilowatt hour, and the average commercial rate was 5.91 cents per kilowatt hour. This year, in residences the price was 7.5 cents and the commercial price was 5.9 cents.”
There are plenty of reasons to engage in green building practices, including improved aesthetics and livability. But money can be a strong motivating factor.
“You wish people would be altruistic and do this for the good of the environment,” Lindholm said. “But when you pinch their pocketbooks, you really get their attention.”
Lindholm isn’t alone in thinking that economic pressures will drive many to use more efficient building methods.
Dan Davis, vice president and principal-in-charge at C.G. Schmidt, feels that regulatory pressures and pragmatic economic forces alike will dictate the use of green building technology. Davis is also chairman of the WGBA board.
“(Energy) prices are not necessarily the reason for the spike in green building,” Davis said. “The reason for the spike is raised awareness. But people see the volatility – people see these rapid increases in price – and realize that by using green building they can better protect themselves against that volatility.”
Regulation will also push more people toward green building, according to Davis. He thinks this institutional memory – and the memory that people have of fluctuating energy prices this winter – will last well into the future.
“The energy code the state passed in 1997 has raised awareness,” Davis said. “The price may come back down for whatever reason, but the infrastructure cost and power generation cost for a new power plant is still going to slowly keep rising. I think people’s memory will be long enough when it comes to these price increases. And I think the state will keep on raising the bar with the energy codes.”
More global forces may also come into play in driving businesses to green building, according to WGBA’s past chairman.
“The year 2010 will be the year of peak fossil fuel extraction from the earth,” said Matt Tendler, architect with KS Consulting, a part of the Midwest Sustainable Collaborative. The collaborative, which consists of KS Consulting, a subsidiary of Kahler-Slater Architects, engineers Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates, and IBC Engineering Services Inc., is launching a comprehensive service offering for green building. “Long before complete environmental degradation occurs, we will have wars,” Tendler said. “Now they want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – which is insane. It’s like drinking coffee if you haven’t had enough sleep. Meanwhile, we’re arming ourselves to the teeth. By 2015, Americans will be coming back in body bags from the Middle East.”
But global economic and resource factors are only part of the problem, according to Tendler.
“Just on a macro scale, we haven’t really invested in energy efficient infrastructure for buildings,” Tendler said. “The reason energy has been so cheap is that – well, it’s like you have a 15-year-old car that still runs. It’s cheap until you get hit by a big repair bill or have to buy a new car. We need more energy supply just to meet our demands. And when we build, it will cost more.”
Tendler feels that, while experts say we can meet our collective energy needs with alternative sources, there is a lot more potential to reduce the amount of energy required by paying close attention to green building techniques.
So what exactly is green building? Lindholm describes it as “any attempt made to build consciously for energy conservation, human comfort and economy. It’s an integrative process. There isn’t necessarily a checklist of what is required for a building to be considered green. There’s no clear, well-delineated definition.”
Any number of different elements can qualify as green building practices. According to Lindholm, those elements include:
1. Indoor air quality, including toxins that can be emitted by wall coverings, carpets and other building materials – In construction of its headquarters, C.G. Schmidt paid attention to this factor by allowing time for out-gassing of materials prior to occupancy.
2. Energy efficiency – Energy efficiency can be improved by selecting thermally sound building materials, and through the use of efficient heating and air conditioning systems. In WGBA’s office in downtown Milwaukee, highly reflective ceiling tiles have been installed to make better use of natural and artificial light. Highly efficient fluorescent lighting fixtures have also been installed.
3. Wise use of natural light – Daylighting is a hot topic now, not only because of energy efficiency, but because of improved aesthetics. Lindholm mentioned that studies have been conducted that show that children in facilities that use daylighting do better on standardized tests – and strangely enough exhibit 13% less tooth decay.
4. Real estate – Site selection can be key, particularly as it relates to the use of passive solar energy.
5. Recycling – Materials can be recycled on-site during a redevelopment project. Other building materials available commercially are made of post-consumer waste. Most carpet is made of recycled plastic soda bottles. Flooring soon to be installed at the WGB office is made of shredded tires. Some companies, according to Lindholm, actually lease carpeting, replacing it for the client occasionally and recycling the old carpet and backing.
6. Careful use of water – Low-flow toilets and public restroom sinks that turn off rather than run incessantly are important considerations. While regulation regarding the quality of water that runs off of buildings and parking lots may, in many instances, require good stormwater practices, many green builders are installing wet-bottom detention ponds to clean runoff even when not required by law.
7. Landscaping – Natural landscaping can improve the environment by limiting the amount of fertilizer and herbicide required to maintain a property, while at the same time preventing erosion and soil loss. Native plants often have much deeper root structures than turf grass.
A holistic approach
While none of the above technologies in and of themselves make a building green, they are all tools that can be used to make a more livable, economical structure. And in many cases through intelligent planning, they can be incorporated with a zero-sum increase in construction cost and design fees.
“Commercial building studies show that commercial energy uses have really grown,” Tendler said. “The presumption is that it will cost a heck of a lot more to do an energy-efficient building – and it’s just not so. In an absolute bottom-dollar building, any energy enhancement would cost more. But with a medium-budget range you can do a lot with no added budget.”
Tendler cites a study compiled by the Energy Center of Wisconsin, which shows that energy efficiency gains have been made in the residential and industrial sectors – while commercial buildings lag behind.
“But in terms of commercial buildings, we’re doing pretty poorly,” Tendler said. “Building technologies are more efficient than they were years ago, but people aren’t thinking along the lines of green building. Lighting has become more efficient, but now we have computers everywhere – and computers have wiped out the savings from other more efficient technologies. A lot of it is simply because the economy has done well and businesses have expanded, but have only done superficial energy efficiency enhancements focused on individual components. Maybe they’ve looked at lighting or refrigeration. But the hallmark of green building is to look at things holistically. In office buildings, much of the cooling load comes from heat released from lights. So if you don’t over-illuminate the building, you’ll save money on lighting, and the air-conditioning unit can be smaller. Maybe you use daylighting, which is more and more common. That kind of approach is very sophisticated and holistic and therefore it’s not standard.”
According to Mark Zimmerman of Milwaukee architectural firm Zimmerman Design Group, green building can involve a number of little things intelligently employed. Zimmerman Design was the architect for green buildings for S.C. Johnson in Racine and Johnson Controls in Milwaukee, but very little of the functional improvements can be attributed to whiz-bang architectural or engineering tricks.
Zimmerman’s work includes Johnson Controls’ $25 million, 130,000-square-foot Brengel Technology Center in downtown Milwaukee, which was occupied early last year. To the untrained eye, some features would seem, in Zimmerman’s words, heroic, including a weather station on the building roof, which is used to predict the load on the mechanical systems.
“None of the things I’ve done are heroic efforts for the environment,” Zimmerman said. “There are no solar panels on the roof – no windmills out front. But there is the sense that the people in the structures are happier and more productive.”
Green building methods can involve choosing extremely old technology, Zimmerman said, including the brick that was used on the Brengel Technology Center.
“Sometimes it’s as simple as choosing durable materials, which goes hand in hand with green building. Look at the stone in the courthouse in downtown Milwaukee. Look at other buildings that have lasted 100 years. The materials are traditional, and people are comfortable with them. Use them.”
Projects completed by Zimmerman for S.C. Johnson and Johnson Controls are green buildings because of factors such as the use of environmentally friendly carpet and materials used to secure carpet to the floor. Significant, too, is the fact that windows are operable, and daylighting is provided, and there is 100% outdoor air provided and circulated through the space.
Zimmerman worked with S.C. Johnson on its Commercial Markets Headquarters in Sturtevant. The Commercial Markets division moved into its new “living lab” building in 1997, and operates independently from S.C. Johnson, concentrating on the professional maintenance and institutional markets.
According to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Associate Professor Jim Wasley, who served as a consultant on design of S.C. Johnson’s building, the project bears a number of the hallmarks of green building.
“S.C. Johnson mixes lab space with office space on the same floor. This sounds easy, but from an architectural standpoint it is difficult to do,” Wasley said. “One thing that is interesting about good architecture is that everything you do tends to solve three or four problems. S.C. Johnson has higher ceilings – and this makes it easier to bring daylight deeper into the building.”
But daylighting was not the real reason for the high ceilings, according to Wasley.
“Labs have very complex mechanical system requirements that take up a lot of space,” Wasley said. “This required the ceilings to be higher. But this is what also makes the building better daylit.”
A high-end feature of the S.C. Johnson building is an underfloor air distribution system, which has been popularized in Europe. Underfloor systems of this type allow any floor tile to be removed to provide temperature-controlled air exactly where it is needed rather than venting it into an entire room through the ceiling. But that feature, too, solves more than one problem.
“What people are finding is that businesses have so many different computer requirements, these floor systems are becoming the norm,” Wasley said. “In the life of the building, it saves the occupants a huge amount of money over time, which is one of the things green building is all about.”
While S.C. Johnson is a major branded product manufacturer with deeper pockets than smaller businesses, aspects of the project are within reach of those with more mundane means.
“They wanted it to be very high profile and very green,” Wasley said. “But right from the beginning, they did not want to spend more than a typical Class A office building. Their building was not outrageous in cost but was not cheap. However, much of budget went into things that did not have to do with being green – they had to do with constructing a very nice facility. A more standard client can do a lot of things that SC Johnson did. They have light shelves, which are a little expensive, but bounce light into the center of the building.
“And they had a very successful job-site recycling program. They had one Dumpster filled just with metal stud cutoffs, one Dumpster filled just with drywall, one filled just with cardboard. A construction site generates a huge amount of waste, but they managed to recycle most of it – for significant savings.”
More than energy
But green building is about more than saving money on heating, cooling and electricity. According to Tendler, the biggest dollar savings come in terms of increased productivity.
“Savings through green building can be divided into those that affect global issues and those that affect individual health,” Tendler said. “Energy for a commercial building can cost about $1 to $2 a square foot. People cost $200 to $500 a square foot. Productivity increases due to design considerations can be in the neighborhood of 5%. So it is not unrealistic to see $15 per square foot savings through increased productivity alone.”
Tendler added that businesses in the United States lose $60 billion a year to illnesses caused by poor indoor air quality alone.
In the case of West Bend Mutual, which built a new 150,000-square-foot building with the help of Zimmerman Design Group, productivity can increase even more than that.
According to West Bend facilities manager Bob Schmidtt, the company saw a 15.75% increase in productivity versus technology and comfort levels in its old building. Savings in terms of energy were considerable, as well. The new facility uses Johnson Controls’ Personal Environments – a meld between Johnson Controls’ mechanical systems and automotive divisions. Those auto-like environmental units give temperature and ventilation control to each employee in their cubicles.
“For utilities, we used to be at 18 cents a square foot,” Schmidtt said. “In the new building, we were at 11 cents a square foot. Now we’re at 12 cents a square foot, but we’ve added 150 or so employees.”
Apart from the personal environmental controls, the new building uses thermal ice storage tanks, which are used on off-peak energy hours to freeze enormous ice cubes which are then used to cool the building during peak energy consumption times.
“This is an all-electric building, which is unusual,” Schmidtt said. “We have special glazing on our windows to reflect the heat during our summer months. The building is completely run by the computer based on occupancy. We are also in a study of Real Time Pricing with Wisconsin Electric. We adjust the building based on the cost of electricity for that hour. One hour we may have all the lights on, others we have the hallway lights off. Other times if electricity is really cheap, we’ll run the chillers to make the ice.”
Schmidtt said the facility still uses a soon-to-be-phased-out refrigerant, freon 22, but will be switching to non-CFC refrigerant soon.
Similarly comprehensive measures were taken in the construction of contractor C.G. Schmidt’s new facility. Like West Bend Mutual, the firm also tracked its employees’ reactions to their new environment.
According to Tendler, who served as architect for the C.G. Schmidt project, the building employs a comprehensive green-building approach.
“First of all, the site itself was degraded. It was a dumping ground for the rest of the office park,” Tendler said. But by the time the project was complete, the site looked more like a billboard for green building.
Even outside the building, many green-building practices were used. The landscaping involves native prairie species, and salvaged as many existing trees as possible. A small wetland/stormwater detention basin was created to filter runoff from the building’s roof. Porous pavement was used to allow more water to infiltrate as opposed to running off into storm sewers.
In the design of the building, energy modeling, which allows designers to use software to predict how a building will perform with regard to heat and cooling loss, was used. That technique contributed to an 18% improvement over Wisconsin code requirements.
The building was positioned with a southern orientation to maximize daylighting. Efficient heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting and other components were employed.
To protect interior air quality, pollutant source exhausts were located strategically, to avoid reintroduction to the ventilation system, and finishes were used that emitted few, if any, volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Apart from financial savings on energy and building operation, a study completed by Kahler-Slater suggests that the employees are responding positively to their new surroundings. Kahler-Slater surveyed C.G. Schmidt employees both before and after the firm moved from the northeast part of the city to its new headquarters on Milwaukee’s far northwest side. According to study results: