EMAIL INTERVIEW – Jon Moeller and Ken Sinclair

Jon is President of MACH Energy, where he also heads sales and corporate development. Prior to joining MACH, Jon spent a decade in financial services business development and transactional roles at Banc of America Securities, Cowen and Co., and Storage Technology Corporation, completing ~$20B in transactions. Jon earned an MBA in Finance and Information Systems from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BSc from the University of Northern Colorado and has passed the CPA exam. Jon is also currently President of a mixed-use project based in San Francisco, and an active member of ULI San Francisco’s Sustainability Committee.

Sinclair:  Can you describe MACH Energy and its place in the built environment?

Moeller:  MACH Energy is a leading provider of CRETech energy management solutions for commercial real estate property managers, operators, engineers, and owners. Our software solutions work with building professionals to maximize the built environment’s energy efficiency and help building teams find automated ways to improve the value of their assets, saving them both time and money.

Sinclair:  You recently did a survey of 800+ building professionals in the commercial real estate sector. What did you find?

Moeller:  The most significant finding was the overall misunderstanding of the different benefits, uses, and implementation of energy management software (EMS) and building management systems (BMS). Unlike EMS, building management systems can often be cost prohibitive, difficult to use and do not provide analytics, dollar visibility or reporting that optimize energy management operations, resulting in a less-than-ideal framework for reducing costs and increasing job efficiency. Yet the vast majority of those using EMS mistakenly denote it as BMS. This conflation has led to inhibited adoption of EMS systems and forgone energy saving opportunities.

We also found that for 61% of respondents, cost reduction was still the largest driver in implementing EMS. This was followed by energy efficiency reasons, increasing ease and flexibility of day-to-day operations, and ENERGY STAR benchmarking - an increasingly important part of many city and state ordinances.

Ultimately, the survey showed the market for energy management systems to be in a high-growth stage, with 25% of those surveyed responding positively to current or future implementation of energy management software and nearly 50% considering significant future growth.

Sinclair:  Why is there so much confusion around BMS and EMS?

Moeller:  The commercial building industry is in a period of modernization, but is also experiencing growing pains as energy management and technology intersect. As commercial real estate embraces new ways to maximize energy efficiency, it is clear that there needs to be more visibility around the merits, both practical and financial, of energy management solutions that can optimize BMS or be used as a standalone product.

Sinclair:  EMS is quickly gaining attention - what is MACH’s differentiator?

Moeller:  With over a decade’s experience in CRETech and hundreds of thousands of square feet under management, MACH has been able to continually refine and address the biggest challenges facing building teams. MACH’s easy-to-use Insights platform also provides a feature called Initiatives, which automatically highlights the biggest changes buildings can make to reduce costs and increase their Energy Star score.  

By constantly improving our products based on industry needs, MACH continues to work on the cutting edge of energy management solutions.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Sinclair:  How is MACH supporting property owners and managers with EMS?

Moeller:  By streamlining the complexity that surrounds property management, MACH’s software solutions enhance a variety of building teams’ efforts: energy management, tenant billing, and budget and variance reporting, to name a few of many. With a mobile platform that keeps pertinent data at the fingertips of building teams, MACH helps ease day-to-day operations while also identifying energy and cost saving initiatives.  On average, we are able to identify savings of $24,000 and increase Energy Start scores by 11 points per building, proving MACH can quickly add value to our customers’ portfolios.