This week, GreenBiz published an article about smart building technology that profiled newly constructed buildings—like the headquarters of the San Francisco Public Utility Commission—as examples of how the bar is rising for energy efficiency in commercial buildings. Smart building systems have many positive effects including energy reduction costs, yet can be difficult to operate and maintain. The new San Francisco Public Utility Commission headquarters includes state-of-the-art smart building technologies that use 55 percent less electrical energy than the ASHRAE baseline standard.
Integrating smart building technology demonstrates the importance of improving building infrastructure. The other component to smart building design, often overlooked, is service management. According to a study by Pike Research, the need for managing services in automated building management systems is expected to quadruple by 2020, growing from $291 million to $1.1 billion. Current building equipment manufacturers are positioned to provide both services and products in this growing market.
Another GreenBiz article looked at a new analysis from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The analysis reported that 81 percent of the world’s largest public companies that report their greenhouse gas emissions data and sustainability strategies now include physical threats and disruptions from climate changes among their corporate risk disclosures. Thirty-seven percent of the 405 companies reported factors such as flooding, drought, and fires as serious threats. Over the past year, the number of companies integrating climate change factors into their business strategies rose 10 percent. We were also pleased to learn that Microsoft was listed as one of the top five S&P 500 companies for carbon disclosure based on our CDP disclosure score, joining UPS, Hess, Pepco Holdings and Sempra Energy in this year’s ranking.