How green is my building?
Like your refrigerator, worthy commercial structures receive the EPA's Energy Star mark
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | February 12, 2008
Can you rate an office building or a hotel for energy efficiency the same as you can a refrigerator or a washing machine?
The Environmental Protection Agency says yes, and today it is announcing that 1,420 buildings in the United States, including 38 in Massachusetts, received its widely recognized Energy Star rating for 2007.
They included office buildings, manufacturing plants, government buildings, and hotels, and the total was the largest one-year increase in the number of buildings recognized for saving energy since the EPA began rating commercial buildings in 1999.
The agency said properties receiving the Energy Star label have collectively saved nearly $1.5 billion annually in reduced energy bills and cut carbon dioxide emissions equal to the electricity use of more than 1.5 million homes.
Among the Massachusetts buildings winning an Energy Star rating for 2007 are: the John Hancock Tower, 111 Huntington Ave., One Financial Center, 260 Franklin St., 501 Boylston St., Manulife Financial's 501 Congress St., 99 High St., the Hyatt Harborside Hotel, the Hyatt Regency Boston, the Sheraton Boston Hotel, and Wellesley Gateway.
The Lenox Hotel in Boston also won the rating for its 2007 performance, and previously won it in 2004. Even in the intervening years, co-owner Tedd Saunders said yesterday, energy efficiency at the hotel continued to improve.
Built in 1990 and run by three generations of the Saunders family since 1963, the Lenox has an environmental coordinator who advises the staff on reducing energy consumption and educating guests and employees.
The hotel minimizes solid waste through recycling and buys green products and services. Heating and air-conditioning systems, water heaters, kitchens, and pools all are operated with efficiency programs that hotel executives said pay for themselves within four years.
The Saunders Hotel Group also owns the Comfort Inn & Suites Boston/Airport in Revere, which earned a 2007 Energy Star as well. The hotel vans run on low-polluting compressed natural gas, and it just purchased a van that will be fueled by vegetable oil, supplied by the hotel restaurant.
The company monitors monthly use of gas, electricity, and water, as well as quantities of waste. At the Lenox, it installed more than 600 energy-efficient windows, more efficient boilers and heat pumps, and low-energy office equipment and televisions.
It installed more than 4,800 compact fluorescent bulbs in its hotels, which use a fraction of the energy of incandescent bulbs and last years longer. Other new fluorescent lights contain less mercury, while the exit signs in the hotels were retrofitted with hyper-efficient light-emitting diodes.
Motion sensors are used on lights and vending machines, and ozone is used in the hotels' laundry systems, which avoids the use of hot water and chlorine in the daily towel and linen wash.
By Saunders' estimation, modern light bulbs and sensors on vending machines alone remove 52 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
Saunders praised an Energy Star Web-based program that makes it easy for property owners to track energy use and savings.
"The beauty of Energy Star is it makes it very simple to see how you stack up against similar buildings in your area of the country, in your climate," said Saunders, who also runs an energy consulting company for hotels, EcoLogical Solutions Inc.
To earn the Energy Star rating, commercial buildings must show they use nearly 40 percent less energy than average buildings and emit 35 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Buildings must score in the top 25 percent under the EPA's national energy performance rating system in order to earn and display the Energy Star
Building owners conserve energy by using more efficient lighting, better maintaining heating and air-conditioning systems, installing programmable thermostats, and informing tenants and guests of conservation measures. Energy use in commercial buildings, including manufacturing plants, accounts for almost half of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions and almost 50 percent of energy consumption, the EPA said.
Nationwide nearly 4,100 buildings of all types have now earned the Energy Star award since the program began - and last year for the first time the rating went even to big-box retail stores and petroleum-refining facilities.
A total of 113 buildings have won the Energy Star rating in Massachusetts - mostly in the Boston area - since the program began.
Maura Beard, communications director for the EPA program, said it differs from the well-known US Green Buildings Council's LEED program in that Energy Star measures only energy efficiency, while the LEED system considers many other environmental impacts.
However, she said, Energy Star can be more stringent in its ratings for energy use than the similar category under LEED, she said. "Energy Star and LEED are effective if used hand in hand," she said.
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at
tpalmer@globe.com.
