Jamestown Utilizes Smart Building Technology to Adapt Energy and Water Needs to Tenant Occupancy Changes at Brunswig Square
LABBC CASE STUDY
PROPERTY OWNER
Jamestown
PROPERTY TYPE
Office, Retail
SQUARE FEET
138,500
Sponsoring Organizations
17.6%
Property Energy Reduction in 2020
11.7%
Property Water Reduction in 2020
2021 Innovation Awards: Water Performance Finalist
“While many measures towards improving tenant comfort may adversely impact energy efficiency, Brunswig Square’s focus on data analytic tools and smart building optimization measures has maintained a balance between tenant comfort and energy and water consumption.”
CHRIS WEI
Energy Engineer, Verdani Partners
CHALLENGE
Jamestown is a global real estate investment and management company with $12.1 billion in assets under management and a mission to transform spaces into innovation hubs and community centers. Adamantly focused on reducing its environmental impact, the company has set short-, medium- and long-term environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets in order to achieve net zero operational carbon emissions and a 35% reduction in water by 2050 from a 2014 baseline.
To achieve these goals, Jamestown engaged Verdani Partners, a full-service ESG consulting firm, to identify and implement efficiency projects at Brunswig Square, a creative office and retail space built in the heart of Little Tokyo in 1931. Data tracking and analysis technologies such as Aquicore and Measurabl provided insight into real-time energy and water use and allowed the property management team to set a more ambitious goal of 20% energy and water reduction by 2024. Verdani helped Jamestown implement a redevelopment plan from 2016 to 2018 that included a new energy management system (EMS), a new chiller, low flow plumbing installations and an LED lighting retrofit. These projects contributed heavily toward Jamestown’s broader ESG goals.
However, the onset of COVID-19 significantly impacted both Brunswig Square and Jamestown’s overall ESG program. With an increased focus on tenant health and safety, many sustainability projects were suspended in order to budget for indoor cleaning and safety measures. Furthermore, accurately tracking energy and water data proved challenging as many tenant-paid utility bills were unavailable due to tenants vacating their spaces during the pandemic.
STRATEGY
As COVID-19 began to impact property operations, Jamestown worked with Aquicore and Brunswig Square’s property management team to analyze the impact that changes in occupancy had on energy and water performance. The smart building platform helped the property management team analyze real-time trend data, daily peak demand and consumption data relative to its peers, and building engineers were able to use this data to adjust HVAC runtime schedules to better align with existing tenant schedules, leading to significant reductions in heating, cooling and ventilation.
The building also used Measurabl, a leading ESG software platform that provided the Jamestown team a better understanding of the property’s overall carbon footprint by analyzing its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. By obtaining more granularity in its emissions data, the property team was able to explore opportunities to purchase renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets to achieve carbon neutrality in the future. The team also conducted an indoor air quality assessment to determine if upgrading to MERV 13 filters would be feasible. It was determined that the upgrade would overwork the operation of the HVAC fan, so the volume of outside air brought into the building was slightly increased to improve indoor air quality while not significantly overusing energy.
IMPACT
As a result of sustainability measures implemented in 2020, Brunswig Square reduced its total on-site water consumption by 11.8% and its energy consumption by more than 18%, saving upwards of $34,000 in operating expenses compared to 2019. An aggregated Aquicore analysis completed for Jamestown’s properties demonstrated more than $500,000 in energy savings through the end of October 2020. In addition, Jamestown’s portfolio has already exceeded its short term 10-year energy reduction goal of 20% by reducing energy consumption more than 25% and its carbon emissions more than 29%, demonstrating Jamestown’s ongoing commitment to maintaining high energy performance and reducing its carbon footprint.
The success of Brunswig Square’s use of the Aquicore platform has led Jamestown to expand its installations to 16 properties in 2020 with the goal of monitoring and tracking building energy performance using real-time system diagnostics and optimization. With design support from the Smart Energy Analytics campaign, Jamestown implemented a checklist for setting up dashboards and reviewing weekly reports to better manage the advanced platform and maximize energy savings potential. The new platform, coupled with the checklist, has already resulted in a first-year site-level savings average of 4%, with five properties achieving energy savings from 16% to 21%.
