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t is becoming increasingly common for Eighteen percent of CO2 emissions, for
executives to issue or receive environmen- example, are now attributed to commercial
tal sustainability goals. This is especially building energy use, according to the U.S. En-
true in the area of reducing energy use and vironmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY
cost where the volume of energy consumed STAR® program. And many companies unde-
continues on what can often appear to be ruse office space by 50 percent or more—says
an inexorable upward trend. Gartner Research—which also means wasted
heating, ventilating and air-conditioning
(HVAC) and lighting costs for those underu-
tilized areas. This is a lost opportunity to re-
Top Strategies
duce operating costs—such as utilities, taxes,
janitorial and maintenance—as well as costly
physical assets, freeing up capital through the
reduction of the physical footprint.
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Facility Management Journal
conservation initiatives may be driven purely servation strategy. A major Midwestern state exceed 50 percent of the total information
by bottom line considerations, by concern government’s recent energy management technology budget.
for the environment or both. initiative linked BAS HVAC alarms to its
building operations software. The integrated A typical 10,000-square-foot data center
Whatever the motivation, managers already systems identify the location of the problem in New York City, for example, may spend
have the operational insights and even the on building drawings and automate the is- in excess of US$50 per square foot annually
Integrated Workplace Management Systems suance of work orders when energy manage- on HVAC costs in addition to the cost
(IWMS) software tools that are needed to ment systems detect performance failures of of electricity to run the data center equip-
implement a range of strategies and best heat traps and other system components. ment itself.
practices for conserving energy and achie-
ving other sustainability goals. These tools The state has projected annual energy sav-
and techniques are readily available, easily ings of US$6 million from its energy man-
A great deal of unnecessary
affordable and too often underutilized. agement initiatives statewide, of which the
BAS/IWMS integration is a key part. The
expense and expanded carbon
Stop being a waste of space BAS/IWMS effort alone is expected to
Aside from the impact to your bottom line deliver within its realm of implementation
footprints can be avoided by
that comes from renting or owning surplus an estimated 20 to 40 percent in opera-
buildings, the associated wasted energy costs tional savings, contributing approximately
using some simple, proven
point to the simple conclusion that the faster US$500,000 in cost reduction to the overall
you implement better space management, projected savings. Those and other mea-
and often vendor-neutral
the faster you gain the added environmental sures—such as space consolidation—have
and economic benefit of lower energy use reduced annual statewide emissions of CO2
conservation strategies.
and operating expenses. More frequent by at least 200 million pounds, dropped
space audits using space planning and nitrogen oxide output by nearly 300,000 A contributing cause of that energy expense
management software can readily identify pounds and lowered its sulfur oxide volume is the purchase of unnecessary, frequently
vacant space and opportunities to by more than 500,000 pounds. It is calcu- underutilized, heat-generating server capac-
consolidate your operations. lated that the emissions reductions are the ity—not to mention the cost of constructing
equivalent of removing 16,000 automobiles additional data center space to house it.
BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina from the state’s roads.
did exactly that at its nearly 2 million- Excel-based, manual tracking systems often
square-foot campus and reduced its carbon A similar initiative is being pursued at the can’t keep up with rack server equipment
footprint through a space consolidation University of North Carolina - Charlotte, changes. On the other hand, implementing
program that eliminated the need for a new the state system’s fastest growing campus. a data center management software provides
US$35 million headquarters. Even better, The school’s sustainability commitment easy, graphical visualization and automatic
the consolidation opened up 500,000 square is in large part due to institutional conviction updates to server rack inventories. The
feet of floor space the company could then but it was given added impetus by a graphical views and insights such a product
sublease at its existing campus buildings to state directive to reduce its energy costs offers help to optimize server capacity and
generate US$1.5 million revenues annually. 20 percent by 2010 and 30 percent by 2015. avoid over-provisioning and underutilization
of installed server rack systems.
What the company saved and earns can now Energy economies on such a scale would
be applied toward environmental initiatives produce a considerable bottom line impact Other techniques—such as the implementa-
or other productive uses. at the school given the extent of its facili- tion of hot and cold aisles in data centers—
ties. UNCC currently has 123 buildings can also aid in reducing data center power
There is also virtually no limit to the scal- comprising 6.5 million square feet of space. consumption. Surprisingly, IDC’s 2007
ability of such a strategy in pursuit of energy Because of the university’s continuing ex- power and cooling trends study revealed
savings, in addition to other organizational pansion, that square footage is expected to that fewer than 20 percent of data centers
cost reduction goals. For instance, interna- double by 2020—providing added impetus are using hot and cold aisle configurations.
tional electricity and natural gas producer/ to implementing BAS/IWMS integration
distributor Enel generated a 24 percent re- and other sustainable energy practices now. Avoid working in a "HVACuum"
duction on what had been more than 23 mil- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has
lion square feet of rentable area costs. its heart in outer space but it also has its eye
Prevent data centers from on controlling inner space HVAC costs in
Alarm your facility management generating more heat than light the 140 structures that occupy the center’s
department 24/7 A recent IDC market research report shows 1,200-acre Maryland campus. An energy
Integrating your Building Automation that customers have increasingly identified management audit by the organization’s
Systems (BAS) with your facility manage- the cost-efficient management of power and facility management group found that too
March/April 2010
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ment department’s building operations cooling as the number one challenge for the many of its offices were receiving 24/7
software can be a highly effective energy con- data center. Such operational costs routinely HVAC support—even though they oper-
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ated during a standard nine-to-five workday consolidating office space through tivity. Both measures are helping
and were vacant on weekends and holidays. telecommuting initiatives. the company achieve its goal of reducing its
Twenty-five percent of IBM’s 320,000 carbon emissions 50 percent by 2020 versus
In a variation to the hot and cold aisle workers worldwide telecommute, its 2007 baseline of 1.23 million tons of CO2.
concept at data centers, NASA’s facility saving the company some US$700
management department is attempting to million in real estate costs. Another remote-work advocate—Telecom-
remedy its energy excesses in a trial project mute America—estimates that 60 percent
at one building that indentifies rooms and As part of a billion-dollar cost reduction of a company’s annual real estate costs can be
functions in need of 24/7 HVAC, colocating initiative that also tries to minimize carbon- saved through the right telecommuting strate-
them into clustered zones of their own. based commuting, Vodafone U.K. now has gies. It estimates average annual reductions of
40 percent of its headquarters’ staff working 1,800 miles annually in round-trip commutes
Using its space management software and from home, either full- or part-time. In addi- by workers—saving an average of 53 minutes
computer-aided design drawings to recon- tion, the company encourages videoconferenc- per day in travel time and reducing auto- and
figure space and consolidate the HVAC- ing to further reduce travel and lost produc- bus-generated greenhouse gas emissions.
intensive data centers and other operations,
NASA has reduced its after-hours electric- However, a common thread that runs
ity consumption by up to 13 percent. The throughout many organizations’ telecommut-
encouraging proof-of-concept result can ing programs is to also have employees on-site
be expected to roll-out to the rest of the periodically for meetings or other activities.
campus and benefit government budgets This keeps them integrated with their work
and taxpayers alike. teams and corporate culture.
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formance—the benchmarks against which
progress is measured for environmental sus-
tainability initiatives, cost reduction goals,
business process improvements and other
activities. Too few managers are employing
environmental sustainability KPIs and that’s
a missed opportunity.
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