How a JLL Building Saves Energy, Makes $80K

Overview

This short interview ran on Energy Manager Today on October 22, 2014, under the byline of Sitar Mody, then a senior manager with the Environmental Defense Fund's Climate Corps program. It follows a 10-week summer fellowship in which EDF Climate Corps fellow Karan Gupta worked with JLL, the commercial real estate firm, at 77 West Wacker Drive, a 1-million-square-foot office tower in downtown Chicago. Mody asks JLL senior vice president and general manager Myrna Coronado-Brookover why the company committed to demand response and what the program has returned.

Key Findings

• Energy was the building's second-largest operating expense after real estate taxes, which is what made it a management priority even though the physical asset could not be changed much.
• During the January 2014 polar vortex, JLL was one of only a few property managers watching real-time energy rates. The building sold conserved load back to the grid on three consecutive days and earned $13,000 to $15,000 each day.
• Through the interview date, demand response had generated $75,000 to $80,000 for the building in 2014, directly offsetting the energy line item and adding to the asset's value.
• Coronado-Brookover frames the competitive advantage as offering "more for less": tenants who pay operating expenses gravitate to conscientious buildings, and lower expenses let owners hold rents while staying competitive.
• The hardest part was not the technology but selling it to the in-house engineering team. Once the engineers owned the project, they delivered the results.
• The editor appends a note that a 2014 D.C. Circuit ruling had cast doubt on federal demand response rules and could limit participation by firms like JLL.

Why It Matters for Daylighting

Demand response pays buildings to shed load when the grid is stressed, and the load that is easiest to shed without anyone noticing is electric lighting in spaces that already have daylight. A warehouse or distribution center with prismatic skylights and daylight-responsive controls can dim or switch off most of its high-bay fixtures during an afternoon event and still meet task light levels, which turns toplighting into a revenue-earning demand resource rather than a passive saving. The same holds for big-box retail sales floors under skylights.

The interview's operational lesson transfers directly as well. Daylighting controls, like demand response, live or die on whether the engineering staff understands and owns them. Buildings that treat lighting controls as a design-phase checkbox tend to see the savings erode; buildings whose operators are trained and empowered keep them.

About the Source

Energy Manager Today was a daily trade news site for corporate energy managers, later folded into Environment + Energy Leader. This piece, credited to EDF's Sitar Mody and originally published on EDF's own blog, appeared on October 22, 2014, and runs about two printed pages. The library copy captures only the first two pages of the web printout and ends partway through the editor's note. Neither Energy Manager Today's page nor EDF's original blog post is online today; readers looking for more on the 77 West Wacker project can consult EDF Climate Corps' published engagement summary for JLL.