“Building energy efficiency has far-reaching benefits, not only for the environment, but also in enabling high performing work space, facilitating jobs, and resulting in better financial return,” said Kyung-Ah Park, Head of Environmental Markets Group at Goldman Sachs. “As a global financial institution committed to facilitating market-based solutions to critical environmental issues, we are excited to see the launch of the City Energy Project, which will bring the leadership of 10 cities to help address market barriers and catalyze this important opportunity.”
“As a global leader in bringing energy efficiencies into commercial buildings, Jones Lang LaSalle strongly supports the City Energy Project for building partnerships between local governments and the real estate community to advance energy efficiency,” said Robert Best, Executive Vice President, Energy & Sustainability Services, at real estate investment company Jones Lang LaSalle. “We intend to be actively engaged in the City Energy Project, as both a public advocate and as a building manager, to expand and strengthen these valuable partnerships across the participating cities.”
How it Works
Through this new project, the cities will develop their own locally tailored plans to advance energy efficiency and reduce waste in their large buildings, which can represent roughly 50 percent of their city-wide square footage. These plans, which will include multiple integrated strategies, can make more progress in each city than any one program or policy could alone.
The City Energy Project will offer their energy expertise to help guide the cities through the planning, designing and implementing processes. The energy efficiency solutions that CEP will help the cities develop are flexible to each city’s unique situation, supporting the following goals:
- Promote Efficient Building Operations: Strong building energy performance can be achieved through efficient operations and maintenance, and the training of facilities personnel.
- Encourage Private Investment: Common-sense solutions to financial and legal barriers to energy efficiency should be adopted to increase private investment in building energy improvements.
- City Leadership: Cities should lead by example and reduce taxpayer-funded energy consumption in municipal buildings, and encourage the private sector to match their actions.
- Promote Transparency: Building energy performance information should be transparent and accessible to enable market demand and competition for energy-efficient buildings.
“Energy efficiency creates jobs, lowers energy bills, and is a corner-stone of constructing a sustainable future,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “Los Angeles has long been a leader in environmental policy and we look forward to working with cities around the country to jointly implement policies that stimulate our economy, save money, and reduce our carbon emissions.”
“As a six-time ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year recipient, CBRE prioritizes energy efficiency as a strategic way our real estate clients can get ahead,” said David Pogue, Global Director of Corporate Responsibility at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm. “We strongly support the efforts of the City Energy Project to advance the real estate markets in cities through localized strategies to encourage energy efficiency.”
“With U.S. buildings consuming more primary energy than countries like Russia and India, the scale of the opportunity to optimize building energy performance is significant,” said John Mandyck, Chief Sustainability Officer, UTC Building & Industrial Systems. “Cities collaborating and implementing creative, practical energy efficiency polices can go a long way to reducing America’s $450 billion annual energy bill and carbon emissions.”
For more details about the City Energy Project (CEP), visit www.cityenergyproject.org.
Source: NRDC.
