Data and Tech Meet Sustainability

If you want to find innovation in green building, new construction is the first place you should look. “There are a ton of initiatives going on” in this area, according to Megan Baker, senior director of Engagement for the Green Building Initiative. One trend that intrigues Baker is buildings going net zero energy neutral by using a battery or some other mechanism to store energy. “They’re basically trying to store energy and then be able to use it at various times of the day,” she says.

Through the use of glazing, such as skylights, building designers can create more natural light, which also reduces energy consumption. “It can also have a positive effect on the tenants of the building,” Baker says.

Roofs are another hot item in sustainable design with solar panels (which gives building operators the option to sell or store energy) and both green and white roofs gaining more popularity. White roofs are painted with a solar white coating and reflect up to 90 percent of sunlight (as opposed to traditional black roofs, which reflect only 20 percent), according to the White Roof Project.

“White roofs will reduce the heat island effect, which happens when buildings are collecting solar rays and warming cities,” Baker says. “So, it is trying to mitigate the heat that buildings are collecting.”

While the individual pieces of green building technology have a positive impact, putting all them together can really move the needle.

“Commercial buildings operate as dynamic systems,” says Lauren Hodges, director of Communications at Energy Star for Commercial Buildings & Industrial Plants at the US Environmental Protection Agency. “We know that the greatest gains in energy efficiency come when teams take a whole-building approach, rather than tackling individual upgrades and projects in isolation.”

Hodges says smart buildings can automate this whole-building approach by using advanced energy management systems.

“These centralized operators are at the heart of intelligent buildings’ efforts to measure, track and adjust each building component in relation to the entire system, in real time,” Hodges says. “With an eye towards energy efficiency in particular, facility managers can tie in a building’s lighting, HVAC, window coverings, connected appliances and power strips to a central network, allowing for significant reductions in energy use.”

This network not controls these various systems, but it also produces utility benchmarking data. In fact, Hodges says more utilities are making aggregate whole-building data readily available.

Data is taking the green building movement beyond mere benchmarking though. There are several companies in the marketplace that are developing predictive analytics about what the future environment could be like in a particular metropolitan area.

“It could be physical risks or longer term financial risk from things like utility pricing,” says Erin Hatcher, Vice President of Sustainability for AMLI Residential, for AMLI Residential. “But it’s all new and could be quite an investment in some cases.”