DOE Launches Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance

DOE Launches Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance
Coalition Includes Leading CRE Services Firms, Associations
By Andrew C. Burr

Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy.U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials met with top commercial real estate executives Thursday at the 7 World Trade Center tower in New York to kick off the Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance (CREEA), a public-private partnership that will explore ways to increase the energy efficiency of new buildings. The Alliance is part of an array of programming being spawned from DOE’s Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI), a billion-dollar program aiming to produce widespread zero-energy commercial buildings by the year 2025.

On hand for the launch of the Alliance were about 60 executives from real estate services firms like CB Richard Ellis and Cushman & Wakefield, hoteliers such as Hilton and Wyndham, and real estate trade groups including the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Also part of the coalition are The Walt Disney Co., casino resort owner MGM Mirage and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), the nation’s largest real estate group.

The Steering Committee for the Alliance, comprised of about 20 organizations, will meet each month to share energy efficiency practices and ideas with each other and government officials, said Henry Chamberlain, president and chief operating officer of BOMA, who attended the event with the organization’s chair, Richard Purtell of Grubb & Ellis. Though BOMA runs many of its own energy efficiency programs and forums for property professionals, Chamberlain said there are advantages to government involvement. “It’s a larger forum than BOMA could pull off by itself,” Chamberlain said of CREEA, noting the participation of many firms from outside the real estate industry. “It’s a larger universe of folks that are out there exploring technologies to be more energy efficient. These are the players that are making it happen.”

The Alliance will help the industry speak with a “collective buying voice” to pressure building materials and technology suppliers to create more energy-efficient equipment, DOE said in a statement Thursday. It will also give property firms access to energy efficiency research and technologies at DOE's national laboratories, which may hasten progress, said Scott Hine, acting program manager of DOE's Building Technologies Program. “This collaboration will help speed the adoption of high-performance, energy-efficient buildings by the commercial real estate sector,” Hine stated. The Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative was signed into law by former President Bush as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, and is authorized for more than $1 billion in federal funds over the next decade.

DOE committed $15 million last year to the program’s first phase, a research project involving two national laboratories and 21 companies that will produce new and retrofitted buildings with significant cuts in energy consumption. DOE has also formed the Hospital Energy Alliance and the Retailer Energy Alliance.

The CREEA Steering Committee includes executives from the following organizations: CB Richard Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield, Grubb & Ellis, Hilton Hotels Corp., Jones Lang LaSalle, MGM Mirage, Transwestern, GSA, USAA Real Estate Co., The Walt Disney Co., Wyndham Hotel and Resorts, American Hotel and Lodging Association, ASHRAE, BOMA, Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, International Council of Shopping Centers, NAIOP and Real Estate Roundtable.