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Houston — Oct. 1, 2014 — Transwestern announced that seven of its managed properties are competing in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2014 ENERGY STAR National Building Competition: Team Challenge. Team Transwestern’s seven commercial buildings, totaling 3,696,754 square feet, are going head to head with more than 5,500 U.S. buildings vying to reduce energy consumption, carbon pollution, and water use.
“We are very excited to launch our first year of participation in the Battle of the Buildings competition,” said Al Skodowski, Transwestern managing senior vice president and director of LEED and sustainability services. “Transwestern has a longstanding commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency, and this competition showcases the firm’s public pledge to drastically reduce energy consumption in its managed portfolio.”
The participating buildings include:
• Metro Park III, 6354 Walker Lane, Alexandria, Va.(130,170 square feet)
• 200 West Madison, Chicago (928,040 square feet)
• Pennzoil Place, 711 Louisiana St., Houston (1,814,930 square feet)
• The Berkshire at Preston Center, 5950 Berkshire Lane, Dallas (184,794 square feet)
• Sixth Avenue West, 350 Indiana, Golden, Colo. (124,504 square feet)
• The Atrium, 19100 – 19200 Von Karman Ave., Irvine, Calif. (399,382 square feet)
• Corporate Pointe – BRCP, 300 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, Calif. (114,934 square feet)
As of mid-year, Transwestern manages 917 projects totaling 231 million square feet. The firm has reduced the annual electric usage in its managed portfolio by 96,697,560 kBtu since second-quarter 2013, avoiding 17,325 metric tons of CO2.
This year’s competition is modeled after popular weight-loss competitions, in which buildings will lose energy and water “weight” through improvements in efficiency. Competitors list their “weigh-in” results on the EPA website (energystar.gov/battleofthebuildings).
“Thousands of buildings across the country are going on energy ‘diets’ with help from the EPA and ENERGY STAR,” said Jean Lupinacci, director of the EPA’s ENERGY STAR Commercial Buildings Program. “Organizations like those competing in this year’s National Building Competition are taking a bold step by putting themselves in the spotlight as they compete to protect the environment and save as much energy as possible.”
Competitors will measure and track monthly energy consumption using the EPA's ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool, make improvements to building energy performance and share their progress. In April 2015, the EPA will select the individual and team competitors that demonstrate the greatest percentage-based reduction in energy use intensity and the competitors with the greatest percentage-based reduction in water use intensity. The EPA will also recognize a top building by building category using the same metric, as well as all individual and team competitors that reduce energy or water use by 20 percent or more.
According to the EPA, energy use in commercial buildings accounts for nearly 20 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and energy use at a cost of more than $100 billion per year. On average, 30 percent of the energy used in commercial buildings is wasted. Thousands of businesses and organizations work with the EPA’s ENERGY STAR program and are saving billions of dollars and preventing millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere each year.
Transwestern is a privately held real estate firm specializing in agency leasing, property and facilities management, tenant advisory, capital markets, research, and sustainability. The fully integrated global enterprise leverages competencies in office, industrial, retail, multifamily, and healthcare properties to add value for investors, owners, and occupiers of real estate.
