The Alliance is pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 Sustainability Showcase Awards! Each year, the Showcase Awards recognize businesses and organizations in California who are leading the way towards a less energy intensive, low carbon future and provides a platform for the honorees to share their success stories and best practices.
This year’s award recipients (and award categories) are: Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (Commercial Buildings), Eden Housing (Multifamily Housing), the City of Chula Vista (Local Government), and the Santa Clara Valley Water District (Water Agency). EAH Housing and the City of Tulare received honorable mentions.
Each of the above organizations is dedicated to advancing sustainability goals internally and in the broader community. In addition to achieving emissions reductions and water and energy savings, a number of these organizations have also realized significant economic savings. Their successes this year are proof that in spite of—or even because of—the recent economic downturn, sustainable practices are important to economic as well as environmental well-being.
In the coming months, we will be posting online showcases featuring each of these organizations. But in the meantime, we’d like to share with you a few of the best practices that make this year’s Showcase Award winners such leaders in their fields:
The Balboa Park Cultural Partnership—a coalition of 26 art, science, and cultural institutions—is working to educate, promote, and implement sustainability best practices in park buildings and operations through its Environmental Sustainability Program. The Program has fostered greater collaboration among the Park’s institutions, developed social and environmental metrics to measure success, and implemented a number of energy saving, renewable resource, and waste reduction measures. The San Diego Natural History Museum, for example, is the oldest museum in the country to obtain LEED-EB: O&M certification.
Eden Housing has built and maintained high quality affordable housing in Northern California for over 40 years. The company is focused on making all of its business practices more sustainable, from committing to exceed California Title 24 energy efficiency standards by at least 15% on all new construction, to securing millions in grants for solar, lighting, water conservation, and energy-efficiency retrofits for its existing properties. The company does active outreach to residents, and has implemented recycling programs in all of its properties.
The City of Chula Vista—the second largest city in San Diego County—has implemented a comprehensive Climate Change Protection Program across all City departments to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, foster alternative fuel vehicle use, improve water use efficiency, and design walkable, transit friendly communities. The program has helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations by 47% and has reduced per capita community emissions by 27% compared to 1990 levels.
Anticipating a future of increasingly constrained water supplies, the Santa Clara Valley Water District is doing its best to prepare for the worst. The District, a certified green business, has an award-winning water use efficiency and conservation program. Additionally, its greenhouse gas emissions reduction program provides a framework for continuous improvements to fuel, energy, and water efficiency, including the implementation of alternative energy generation, all in an effort to ensure the future water needs of Santa Clara are met in a sustainable way.
EAH Housing is committed to providing the 20,000 families, students, people with disabilities, and seniors it serves with high quality design and sustainable, livable communities. The organization is one of the largest multifamily recipients of California Solar Initiative incentives and has installed the largest multifamily affordable solar project in the US (Crescent Park in Richmond, CA). Its company-wide sustainability initiative covers all areas of operation, from new development, acquisition and rehab to property management and corporate operations.
The City of Tulare, located in central San Joaquin Valley, is committed to ensuring sustained economic and environmental vitality for future generations of residents. As part of this effort, Tulare has implemented extensive building retrofit and residential solar programs, developed a 900 kw fuel cell system, installed 1 MW of solar power at the City’s wastewater treatment plant, and will soon complete a citywide Climate Action Plan.
Nike Considered designs will lower the company's environmental footprint.
Earlier this month, I attended a seminar on sustainability innovation in the tech industry at Dreamforce 2010, salesforce.com’s 8th annual conference (anyone familiar with Dreamforce, or with salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff, should recognize this massive understatement—imagine a sales event-rock concert-thought leadership expo and you’ll get a rough idea). Titled “How Efficiency, Collaboration & Innovation Can Help Mitigate Climate Change”, the session brought together Eric Olson, Senior Vice President at Business for Social Responsibility; Lorrie Vogel, General Manager of Nike Considered; and Ted Howes, co-lead of IDEO’s Energy Practice, to share their thoughts on the role of technology in solving one of society’s biggest challenges.
I was particularly intrigued by Lorrie Vogel’s discussion points, which covered two exciting topics: Considered Design, Nike’s closed-loop design vision, and the GreenXchange, an open platform for sharing patented design information (which I will cover in my next blog post). For this discussion, I want to discuss Considered Design and some thoughts about the broader implications that sustainability implementers of all types can draw from Nike’s model.
At its core, Considered Design represents a coordinated approach to tackling what sustainability means (definition) and how it is achieved (implementation). For a major footwear and apparel manufacturer, sustainability issues cut to the heart of business: making core products in a completely new way, without sacrificing quality. Considered Design serves as Nike’s big first step toward realizing a long-term vision of closed-loop design for all of its products.
The initiative began as a set of design ideals (or “ethos” in Nike-speak) adopted by the company. Yet, despite clear vision from company leadership, Nike’s designers struggled with the task of incorporating sustainability principles into their work. The overarching issue the designers faced resonates with many who have considered the issue of sustainability: How, and where, do we start? Nike management answered with the Considered Index, a technology-based tool that gives designers real-time feedback on how well their products measure up against the expectations and goals embedded in the Considered Design ethos. To develop this tool, Nike calculated the lifecycle environmental footprint of all products and processes—from idea generation through final production—and used the results to identify the four areas where design could most influence the company’s overall environmental impact: materials; waste; solvents; and innovation. The Considered Index provides designers with real-time feedback on the predicted environmental footprint of a given product using detailed data for all materials used in Nike’s commercial products. Every available material and design element carries a score within the Considered Index, and built-in benchmarking shows how a product-in-development would rate against the company average. Some highlights of the impact this effort has had so far:
Reduced waste: A new shoe box, planned for use with all shoe products by 2011, uses 100% recycled fiber and features a design that reduces fiber content by roughly 30% over previous models.
Reduced pollution: By 2009, 76% of Nike shoes contained environmentally preferred rubbers (up from 3% in 2004), which are patented formulas that reduce toxins by more 95% yet mimic the performance and look-feel of traditional rubber. There is no cost difference.
Reduced GHG emissions:
Eliminated the use of potent greenhouse gas SF6 from all footwear products.
Reduced carbon emissions from owned facilities and business travel by 18% between 1998-2005 despite facility growth of 6% over that period.
Better farming practices & industry transformation: Organic cotton represents 14% (>21 million pounds) of the cotton fiber used in Nike Apparel products, making Nike the 3rd largest retail user of organic cotton in the world. Nike currently incorporates most of the organic cotton fiber as blend material in apparel, using a minimum 5% blend for 86% of cotton products. The 5% blend has become an industry standard for yarn suppliers who supply a range of other brands and Nike plans to double the minimum to 10% by 2015, a decision likely to ripple across the apparel supply chain.
The Nike Environmental Design Tool, a public version of the Considered Index, was recently released along with supporting data and methodology for public use. Nike documents its sustainability goals and progress in detail in its Corporate Responsibility Report. So what can we pull from this, apart from a clear illustration of Nike’s elegant approach to lightening the environmental load of its consumer products? One of the lessons is that successful sustainability efforts require at least two key elements: first setting a clear vision for sustainability within the organizational context (definition), and then providing employees with the tools to incorporate that vision into their regular job function (implementation).
As the green building movement gains momentum, there is a growing recognition by the financial markets of the magnitude of potential investment opportunities in the sustainable building and construction sector.
A recently published research note by Canaccord Genuity concluded that the adoption of green practices is a significant trend that is likely to become the norm in the global building and construction industry. In recent years, the percent of non-residential building that is “green” has increased rapidly – growing from less than 1% in 2000 to 10%-12% in 2008 – and is expected to reach 20% or more by 2013. Mc-Graw Hill Construction recently estimated that market spending for green building in the U.S. will reach $135 billion by 2015.
The demand-side, supply-side, and regulatory factors driving this transformation include:
the proliferation of green building standards, such as LEED®, ENERGY STAR® and ASHRAE
the realization of financial benefits, including lower energy costs, higher rents and lower vacancy rates
legislative mandates such as green building codes, and incentives such as tax credits, accelerated permitting and equipment rebates
the continuing volatility of energy prices
There were several key developments in 2010 that helped to maintain the momentum of the green building movement:
ASHRAE 189.1. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers introduced “a new standard for the design of high-performance green buildings” that is expected to result in a 20% or more improvement in energy performance over the standard it replaces. The release of a new standard by ASHRAE is an important development because ASHRAE standards are often referenced in building codes.
International Green Construction Code. In March the International Code Council (ICC) launched the International Green Construction Code. This is a green version of the existing ICC codes, which are widely used to define local and state building codes. The ICC collaborated with ASHRAE and the US Green Building Council on the development of the new code, and it is expected to have a significant impact on standardization of building codes at both a national and international level.
The report also highlights the momentum being gained by green retrofits to existing buildings. Existing buildings comprise a much larger market than the new construction market, and several researchers have estimated the potential for retrofit investments could run into hundreds of billion dollars. Spending on energy efficiency has been held back by the recession, but is expected to rebound strongly in the coming years, as building owners respond to regulatory pressures and tenant demand for sustainable workplaces.
One of these presentations was given by Sue Jamison, Residential Marketing Manager at Energy Trust of Oregon, a non-profit organization funded by Oregon energy consumers to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy across the state. Jamison’s presentation was on Solarize Portland, an innovative, community-driven program launched in 2009 to increase residential solar adoption in Southeast Portland.
Despite Portland’s deserved reputation as an environmentally-minded city, in 2008 the city was lagging in residential PV installations—just 38 were installed that year compared with 168 in San Francisco. In fact, Energy Trust had observed through its own programs that the perceived interest in residential solar did not match up with installations. Through non-profit marketing agency SmartPower, which conducted a study on market barriers in Oregon, Energy Trust found that the main issues for residential customers were upfront costs, the wide range of price quotes from contractors, and the buyer fatigue associated with a complicated, and often protracted, process of picking equipment and getting it installed.
Solarize Portland came into being as a partnership between Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition (SE Uplift) and Energy Trust, with the goal of getting more solar panels on Portland homes by addressing the key barriers identified by SmartPower. So how did this work? Several core elements created a simple, unique, and highly effective program:
Community groups spearheading the effort and strong neighbor-to-neighbor marketing
Tiered pricing for PV systems with a limited window for sign ups (everyone loves a sale!)
A $2.25/watt incentive from Energy Trust coupled with state and federal tax credits
Educational workshops in the community
Site assessments provided for free
Other elements of the program included community selection of a contractor through a competitive bid process, clever marketing campaigns such as yard signs that read “This house is solarizing!”, and the built-in incentive for participants to recruit more of their neighbors so that everyone’s price would go down. Drawing on local knowledge, SE Uplift organized its educational workshops around activities that would be popular with neighborhood residents —such as holding workshops at a local bar—and made sure to offer at least one event per week during the 6 week enrollment period.
The results are impressive: Out of 350 homes that signed up with the program, 120 installed PV systems. That’s a more than 34% success rate, and 3 times the number of installations seen in 2008.
Even better, Energy Trust coupled this program with a pre-existing offering aimed at energy efficiency, which provided the opportunity to make some basic energy efficiency retrofits in homes that received a site assessment for the Solarize program. Steve Lacey, Director of Operations at Energy Trust, mentioned that the agency is looking to start a new program similar to Solarize Portland but for energy efficiency retrofits. Weatherize Portland, perhaps? Stay tuned…
As shown by our Green Building Barometer, the commercial real estate industry is steadily moving towards a more sustainable foundation. Almost half of California’s Class A office space is now green.
And while the recession has brought the construction of new buildings almost to a standstill, many owners of existing properties are conducting upgrades and efficiency improvements and achieving LEED or Energy Star certifications. The trend is being driven largely by tenants, particularly the large corporations that occupy much of the Class A space in the major metropolitan cities. These organizations are embracing sustainability throughout their business operations, and one outcome of that is increasing demand for greener office space.
When we look at California’s major markets, San Francisco continues to set the pace, with 63% of Class A space now either LEED or Energy Star certified. Orange County has the second-largest percentage, with 52% of Class A space being green, up from 24% in 2008. Sacramento has achieved the most impressive growth, with the proportion of green Class A space increasing from just 9% in 2008 to 29% today. Los Angeles and the East Bay / Oakland are also closing in on achieving 50% penetration of green building, while San Diego is further behind on 41%. The South Bay / San Jose (30%) and Inland Empire (20%) markets have the lowest proportion of Class A space recognized as green.
For lower-quality office buildings, the amount of Class B office space that is certified as green has doubled over the past year, but the proportion is still low, with green space accounting for just 7.5% of all Class B buildings. Only in two major cities, San Francisco and Sacramento, is more than 10% of Class B space certified green. However, the low number does not mean that green improvements are not taking place in these types of buildings. The economics of these lower-quality and lower-rent buildings are such that it is often unrealistic for them to seek Energy Star or LEED certification. In practice, there are many incentive programs aimed at improving the energy efficiency of older and smaller buildings.
2009 Sustainability Showcase Award Recipients with Alliance Advisors Bridgett Luther, Cynthia Truelove & Stephen Bushnell
Exciting news - we are now accepting submissions for the 2010 Sustainability Showcase Awards! Now in its third year, the Sustainability Showcase Awards recognize the successful sustainable policies, programs, practices and technologies implemented by leading organizations in California.
We are seeking leaders in four categories:
Commercial Buildings: Any organization whose primary mission involves ownership and management of one or more commercial properties in California.
Multifamily Housing: Organizations that own and/or operate portfolios of one or more multi-family housing buildings in California.
Local Government: Cities, counties, joint powers authorities, special districts or other types of local governmental entities formed and operated pursuant to California state law that have a role in implementing California’s environmental policies.
Water Agencies: Water and/or wastewater utilities that provide wholesale and/or retail services to California residents and businesses.
Submissions are currently being accepted and will be received until midnight on December 1, 2010. The winning entries will be announced here and on the main website in mid‐January.
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