Posted by Evan Smith on Fri, Jul 23, 2010 @ 01:41 PM
Excerpted from an article written by MMG Prinicpal C. Evan Smith.
Hurt in our pocketbooks, we've recently had an impassioned awakening of desire to drive real efficiency and productivity. We need our businesses to be more competitive and our governments less expensive.
Here's one specific area for consideration. United States commercial real estate (all buildings except residential housing and goods-producing industries like manufacturing, agriculture and construction) consumes energy at a substantial and growing rate. It will grow at two-thirds the rate of gross domestic product through 2025, according to the Annual Energy Outlook 2005 published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency. In 2003, the commercial building sector, which is made up of 4.9 million commercial buildings covering more than 71.6 billion square feet of floor space, consumed 17,548 trillion BTUs of energy. Estimating a conservative nominal energy cost of $10 per MMBTU, the energy bill for commercial buildings in the U.S. exceeds $175 billion annually.
To read the full article click on the link to the story in
Greener Buildings, A GreenBiz.com publication.