Colorado-Real-Estate-Journal_502934

INSIDE M any people believe that replacing equipment lowers their energy use index score overnight, but unfortunately, that is not entirely the case. Building owners and managers ask if we can lower their EUI within less than a month to meet upcoming compliance deadlines. Lowering a building’s EUI typically takes six to eight months or longer, plus, a 12-month reduced EUI dataset is usually needed to show program compliance. Howev- er, the sooner improvements begin, the sooner building owners benefit from upgraded systems, improved operations, and reduced utility costs. n Office building case study: “Office Building A.” In the fall of 2023, our team was contracted to perform a retro-commissioning (RCx) study to assess and reduce energy usage at an office building. Our team pro- vided recommendations for energy reduction and facility improvement, with an eye toward lowering the usage to comply with upcoming energy performance requirements from Energize Denver. Overall, the energy conserva- tion measures and facility improve- ment measures in our report resulted in an EUI reduc- tion of 16.9, which was 19% of the building’s energy usage. This num- ber surpasses nearing compliance deadlines for both Energize Denver and Colorado Building Performance Standards, and nearly meets final performance compliance. n Energy performance data and anal- ysis. The data is the bottom line of the whole project in order to show the building’s baseline and annual reduction. Accompanying is a graph created to show Office Building A’s energy use index between October 2023 and October 2025, for a project that started in September 2023. This graph was created using data from Energy Star Portfolio Manager and automatically inputs those cal- culated values into our monitoring- based commissioning software to provide clear, tangible results from implementing conservation mea- sures. This approach allows for building- wide integration and the ability to display data from multiple sources, allowing building automation trend data, compliance tracking, energy usage, emissions, equipment life cycles can be easily tracked and depicted. This results in a good analytics platform that is crucial for identifying actionable items, progress toward completion, and tangible results that last over time as well as reducing potential risk of EUI creep. The graph shows the ebbs and flows of energy use throughout the year and the reduced energy use after the implementation of energy conservation measures and facility improvement measures that began in winter 2023-2024. The blue line is the 12-month running average EUI (kBTU/ft2), the darker blue bars are the monthly gas energy use (kBTU), and the lighter blue bars are the monthly electricity energy use (kBTU). The dotted yellow line depicts the tar- get baseline (kBTU/ft2), the orange dotted line depicts the 2028 target (kBTU/ft2), and the red dotted line depicts the 2032 final target (kBTU/ ft2). Measured EUI reduction results n Implemented efficiency measures. For this project, there were 11 ECMs and 11 FIMs recommended to lower Office Building A’s energy use index. Some examples of ECMs included Tenant satisfaction relies on timely, quality operational maintenance excellence Maintenance Late winter/early spring is one of the most strategic times to plan ahead Landscape planning PAGE 17 Grow boldly, as professionals, as leaders and as human beings – together BOMA January 2026 PAGES 20-23 PAGE 10 Erik Jeannette, PE Director of engineering, Iconergy Please see Jeannette, Page 19 Office building case study on lowering EUI