April 2017 |
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
|
EMAIL INTERVIEW – Ralf VonSosen and Ken Sinclair
Ralf VonSosen, VP of Marketing, Lucid
As
Lucid's VP of Marketing, Ralf leads product marketing, demand
generation , branding and communications activities. With almost 20
years in the technology space, Ralf brings leadership experience from
small startups as well as large companies such as SAP and LinkedIn. He
was instrumental in establishing the energy/utilities vertical and
Siebel/Oracle CRM and most recently was a founding member of LinkedIn's
sales solutions business unit. Ralf holds a B.S. in Finance from
Brigham Young University and a MBA from the University of Utah.
Articles |
Interviews |
Releases |
New Products |
Reviews |
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Editorial |
Events |
Sponsors |
Site Search |
Newsletters |
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Archives |
Past Issues |
Home |
Editors |
eDucation |
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Training |
Links |
Software |
Subscribe |
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Sinclair:
Why is benchmarking growing in importance for commercial buildings?
People spend 90% of their lives in buildings, which are responsible for
the consumption of two-thirds of all generated electricity. By
taking simple efficiency measures, it’s possible for all building
owners and operators to reduce energy use by 30%. Of course reducing
that energy use is good for the environment, but building operators
also need to make the case to their superiors and investors that
energy reduction is good for the bottom line. Benchmarking is the
fastest way to make that case. By showing how inefficient energy use
translates into high costs, energy and sustainability managers
can arm themselves with compelling cost information to
communicate with other stakeholders about energy expenditures. When
they speak the same language as other building constituents, they can
make more informed decisions and take steps to make buildings
more sustainable, more cost-effective for owners and more
attractive to investors and tenants.
Sinclair:
What benchmarking options have been available in the industry to date?
Until now benchmarking options haven’t seen wide adoption for a few
reasons: datasets were limited, data wasn’t easy for the general
public to access and ingest, and the information was primarily geared
toward niche experts rather than providing cost detail for business
minded audiences. To the first point, a couple of vendors have created
their own calculators that are easy to use but they don’t provide a
complete picture; they only pull from a small subset of the vendor’s
customer base, which renders the findings incomplete and useless.
Conversely, building practitioners could gain access to massive amounts
of data housed in the incredibly thorough government databases such as
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star Target
Finder and the. U.S. DOE Building Performance Database, but to do so
would require quite a bit of sifting, sorting, and industry knowledge
to distil into shareable content. Moreover, while comprehensive, the
government offerings such as Energy Star scores often provide an
arbitrary number without any comparisons for context, and they don’t
prioritize cost information. They provide technical details that
are geared toward skilled engineers, which makes the content difficult
to translate into the language of dollars for business and investor
audiences
[an error occurred while processing this directive]Sinclair:
How did you work with the
Department of Energy, EnergyStar, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to
take benchmarking to the next level?
Last year, Lucid was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy
to pursue innovative ways to improve commercial building performance.
Through that initiative, Lucid teamed with the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (LBNL) to put the grant dollars to work for the
general public. BenchmarkMyBuilding is the result of these efforts.
BenchmarkMyBuilding removes the barriers I mentioned earlier, making
accurate energy cost comparisons available to all building
constituents. It’s free, and vendor agnostic, so there is no need to
rely on one vendor’s data to make the data relevant. This new
benchmark includes data from both the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) Energy Star Target Finder and the. U.S. DOE Building
Performance Database. The DOE has assembled the largest database of
information related to building energy consumption in the world,
representing nearly 4.8 million buildings, comprising 68 billion square
feet of commercial building space, but all of that data was virtually
hidden because it was difficult for a layperson to understand it. But
all of us involved in this project felt there was a large missing
piece: cost savings. Cost is the crucial “why” of energy management;
it’s what makes business execs sit up and take notice. In order to make
a business case to company leaders and investors, energy managers and
sustainability managers need to speak the language of dollars, and
that’s what we’ve delivered in this benchmark.
With the explosion of IoT-enabled devices, interconnected buildings,
and the allure of smart cities, no building owner should be without a
comparative benchmark. Every building stakeholder stands to make or
lose millions of dollars through energy management. The choice is
theirs. Now, it’s finally easy for them to take the first step toward
energy savings by seeing how a building’s energy costs compare to
similar buildings. This is a whole new paradigm, bringing building
energy cost conversations up from the basement to the boardroom.
Operations personnel and finance teams can all communicate about
overall energy expenditures, so they can take steps to make buildings
more sustainable, cost-effective for owners and more attractive to
investors and tenants.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[Click Banner To Learn More]
[Home Page] [The Automator] [About] [Subscribe ] [Contact Us]