BOMA Energy Saver Sub-Committee

Increased Building Performance

Makes Good Business Sense

Understanding your building’s baseline performance just makes good business sense. By improving the base operations of your facility you can expect to save between 5% and 30% off of your energy bills. 

Across the country and in our market tenants are beginning to demand more from their buildings – lower bills, increased comfort, healthier work places, association with a high performing building. By decreasing your operating costs you’ll increase your net operating income and the value of your buildings.  And, it’s relatively easy to do. Sometime the hardest part is knowing where to start and how to get financing for your improvements. 

Here you’ll find the steps to understanding your building’s performance and resources to learn more.

Where To Start

Baseline Your Building:

Step 1: Learn more about the Energy Star® building benchmarking tool here.

Step 2: Create your Energy Star® Portfolio.

Step 3: Identify any changes needed to your portfolio to improve its accuracy.

Review Your Findings:

Step 1: Review your portfolio findings - at the building level and across your building portfolio.

Step 2: Discuss these findings with your building engineers/operations teams.

Step 3: Participate in the BOMA Seattle King County Kilowatt Crackdown event! (Read the Seattle Times article here.)

Make a Plan:

Step 1: Determine building operations and management actions you'll take within individual buildings to improve their performance.

Step 2: Talk with your utility representative about outside funding for any items requiring financing.

Seattle City Light

Puget Sound Energy

Snohomish PUD

Resource Center

Still want to know more about your building performance and ways to improve it? Check out these resources for more information.

Commercial Programs

Seattle Public Utilities Resource Venture Program: The City of Seattle’s Resource Venture program provides outreach, education, and technical assistance to businesses to help those businesses conserve resources, reduce or prevent pollution, and become more sustainable.  Services are offered in six program areas: 1) recycling 2) waste prevention 3) water conservation 4) stormwater pollution prevention 5) green building and 6) climate. 

Seattle Climate Partnership: The Seattle Climate Partnership is a voluntary pact among Seattle-area employers to take action to reduce their own emissions, and to work together to help meet the community-wide goal of meeting or exceeding the global warming pollution reduction target of the Kyoto Protocol. To explore your participation in the Seattle Climate Partnership, download the Partnership Agreement, or feel free to contact Charlie Cunniff (charlie.cunniff@seattle.gov or 206-386-9748) at the Office of Sustainability & Environment.

Seattle City Light Smart Business Program: The $mart Business Program is designed to provide financial incentives to your small business for replacing existing inefficient lighting with approved energy efficient lighting equipment.

Seattle City Light Green Up Program: Green Up is Seattle City Light's voluntary green power program for residential and business customers. By enrolling in Green Up, customers purchase green power for a portion of their electricity use and demonstrate their support for wind power and other new renewable energy projects in the Northwest. Choosing green power fulfills LEED^TM Project green power requirements.

Puget Sound Energy Green Power Program: When you choose Green Power, you’ll support renewable energy projects located right here in the Pacific Northwest.  When you enroll in PSE’s Green Power Program, PSE purchases renewable energy credits from regional renewable energy facilities on your behalf.

Puget Sound Energy Resource Conservation Manager Program: Hire a Resource Conservation Manager (RCM) to increase efficiency by focusing on improvements to operations and maintenance practices and instituting best practices for resource usage in your organization. Puget Sound Energy (PSE) provides funding and support to get your program started. You'll reduce costs of all utilities (electric, natural gas, water, sewer, and waste) by 10 – 15 percent over several years.

Snohomish County PUD Commercial Building Incentives: Snohomish County PUD provides reimbursement of up to 70 percent of the project cost for installing energy-efficiency measures in your facility.  The incentive rates for most energy-efficiency measures are 20 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for the annual first-year project savings. Rates may change without notice.

Saving Water Partnership: The Saving Water Partnership is a consortium of 18 water utilities implementing the 1% Water Conservation Initiative. The 1% Water Conservation Initiative is a water conservation goal to reduce personal and business water consumption 1% every year for ten years.  Utilities participating in the Saving Water Partnership offer financial incentives for:

• Owners/Managers of Apartments and Condos
• Industrial & Commercial Customers
• New Construction and Major Remodels
• Residential Customers

Cascade Water Alliance: The Cascade Water Alliance is an association of cities and water districts working together to ensure a clean, safe and reliable water supply today and well into the future.  Cost-effective conservation efforts to reduce regional demand and the development of new water sources are both important elements of Cascade's long-term water supply plan.

Seattle Department of Planning and Development Green Building Programs: City of Seattle Green Building staff provides customized tools and assistance that will help you successfully incorporate green building techniques for remodeling, construction and development projects.  They have experts to help you with green building projects in these categories:

Residential - homeowners and single family projects

Multifamily - apartments, townhomes, condominiums

Commercial - industrial, institutional and highrise residential

City Projects - City of Seattle facilities

Sustainable Communities - urban design & neighborhood planning