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The launch of a building certification program can be powerful driver for change. Consider Energy Star and LEED . Both arrived at times when the opportunity for gains was significant. Both helped to transform the facility market by providing sought-after stamps of approval. Smart buildings is another arena that could benefit from a widely accepted stamp of approval. An abundance of smart technology exists to reduce...

Over the years, Energy Star has steadily expanded its reach. Today, a wide spectrum of buildings can use the program to score energy performance on a scale of 1 to 100 and to gain certification for energy efficiency. But one segment of the real estate market has been left out: tenants. Congress sought to change that when it passed the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015, which authorized EPA to expand Energy Star...

Imagine that your organization decides that the summertime cooling set point will be raised by several degrees. The goal is to make a significant dent in energy use. Your job is to get people to buy in to the plan. What would you do? This is more than a hypothetical case. The Japanese government did exactly that more than a decade ago, requiring higher summer temperatures in government buildings and encouraging the...

Is now the time? The time to move to a cloud-based, Building Internet of Things platform to link the facilities in your portfolio? Or to install low-flow toilets? Or tubular LEDs? Or an advanced rooftop unit? Or smart windows? The range of new technology options for facility managers can be dizzying. Facility managers who are considering whether to take the plunge might want to keep in mind two pieces of advice. These...

For all the number crunching that goes on in a data center, one number is often conspicuous by its absence: PUE (power usage effectiveness). PUE is a metric that shows how much of the power supplied to the data center is being used by IT equipment. While PUE has its critics, it remains a good benchmark that can help improve the energy efficiency of the data center facility infrastructure. PUE was introduced in 2007...