Green Metrics for Facilities Managers 

by Fred Klammt

When it comes to the built environment, there are many measurements to assess how green a building is.  And measuring the green-ness of buildings is critical—our built environments are responsible for half of our emissions and consume about 76 percent of our electrical supply, according to Architecture 2030.
GHG (Greenhouse Gases) regulation is coming, and sooner or later, this regulation will affect every single existing or new building.

Several states are already enacting laws to curb GHGs.  California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District is the first to impose a GHG fee for businesses. When the law takes effect, the state will charge 4.4 cents per metric ton of CO2 released, amounting to as much as $200,000 annually on power plant smokestacks, or as little as a few pennies a year for an apartment complex with a backup generator, according to SF Gate. Others are sure to follow suit. Who knows—the feds might even get involved. 
Given the impending changes, facilities managers need to get ahead of the curve and manage their built environments’ carbon footprint. 

So, how can facilities managers measure their buildings’ carbon performance? The business proverb ‘you can only manage what you measure’ applies to assessing a building’s environmental impact.  Most FMs are familiar with energy, water, and waste measurements. But many are not familiar with green metrics, which function as environmental accounting and assess the environmental impact of their buildings. Specifically, environmental accounting identifies resource use and measures and communicates the costs of an organization’s actual or potential impact on the environment.  

Between LEED, Energy Star, Design for Environment, Green Globes, and Green Seals + Certifications, how are FMs to know which green metric to adapt for their building? And even more important, which green metric will stand the test of time and best represent a building’s environmental performance?

Top green metrics

The three top green metrics are: 

• TBL (Triple Bottom Line)
• Carbon Mt’s (Metric Tons, Footprint)
• LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment)

Triple Bottom Lin

The holy grail of green business metrics is the Triple Bottom Line (TBL).  Similar to the Balanced Scorecard, it combines three measurements of responsibility:

• Financial;
• Social; and
• Environment.

Financial effects are evolving to include metrics such as Revenue/Mton CO2 emissions.  Social impacts are measured by local labor laws, fair wages, and other indices. And environmental impacts center around carbon footprinting and internal life cycle assessment (such as the ISO 14000 series).

Defining the Carbon Footprint

A common metric to assess our impact on the earth’s capacity to regenerate is termed ‘ecological footprint’.  When we think more specifically about the impact that carbon has on this regeneration capacity, we use the term carbon footprint.

Perhaps we should start with the basics. The basic energy and mass relationship4: E = mc2 governs all fundamental processes.  (According to Wikipedia, “The total amount of mass/energy in a closed system remains constant because energy cannot be created or destroyed and, in all of its forms, trapped energy exhibits mass.”) Conversion of various energy production and usage to carbon emissions is straightforward and depends on the energy mix and local fuel properties. Here are some basic carbon conversion units:  

 * per US fuel usage, based on US EIA (Energy Information Administration) data

The basic carbon measurement unit is one metric ton (Mt) of CO2.  Here is an example of some offset footprints and related carbon emissions, according to the Standard Carbon Annual Emissions Guidelines for Carbon Neutral Small Business Certification: 

California has adopted a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS), which sets a continually declining target for CO2 emissions. In January 2009, California will impose (part of AB32) the nation’s first carbon reduction standards. 

Many international corporations have already been dealing with carbon reduction. Europe, for instance, has its own carbon emission standards, having already learned from a decade of carbon trading.  And these regulations apply to all companies doing business in Europe.

There are two main agencies for carbon emissions:  IETA (International Emissions Trading Association) is the current GHG trading organization for businesses. The Chicago Climate Trust is the only viable carbon registry currently in the United States.  This situation will undoubtedly change within the next year as there are numerous carbon brokers, traders, financiers, and offset schemes all vying for your carbon-caveat emptor!

Carbon foot printing for FMs

The issues surrounding carbon are numerous.  For FMs the concern is how to define what a carbon unit is, how and where it is measured, how it is taxed, traded, and retired.

Within the next few years, most buildings will need a carbon footprint profile. This carbon profile could be mandated by local governments, federal government, private investors, utilities, regulators; or all of the above. And, like the energy profiles that became requirements in the 1970s and ’80s, carbon footprint profiles may well become a permanent part of the FM landscape. One relatively straightforward method for FMs to assess their carbon footprint is to add up all their utility bills and use the appropriate carbon conversion factors (i.e. ~0.52/KWH for the West Coast) to derive an equivalent CO2 energy bill. Conversely, any energy savings can be converted to equivalent CO2 emission reductions.  Isn’t that easy?

Well, it’s not really that straightforward. This method only measures the energy usage within the built environment.  In order to assess a building’s entire footprint, FMs must ascertain a life-cycle analysis of the entire supply chain for all materials, products, services, and labor that a building uses. That is a much bigger project, but it still only provides a thumbnail sketch. We will be expanding the footprint profile to include all the materials in a building’s construction and operations, such as:

• Resource extraction and transportation (mining operation and related issues, miles traveled to production site to the sales shelf and to the user)
  
  
• Embedded energy (what energy it took to make the product/service)
  
  
• Transportation.  Tracking how the product/service gets from office workers to suppliers on a daily basis, to the “food miles” in the food the cafeteria serves, to the miles of all those replacement parts and materials.

A more comprehensive carbon audit would include the embodied energy from all transportation, food, supplies, products, materials, services, labor, and other purposes used within the buildings’ supply chain.

Evaluating the environmental impact

Going beyond carbon measurement, the method of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) evaluates the environmental impact within the ISO14000 standard series. According to Wikipedia,... the investigation and valuation of the environmental impacts of a given product or service caused or necessitated by its existence. It is a variant of input-output analysis focusing on physical rather than monetary flows.

This approach is considered the most thorough and accurate environmental impact assessment tool we have.  Its value is mostly internal to a specific organization. When the methodologies are used externally, discrete internal assumptions do not translate well across organizational boundaries. Comparisons are less than fully reflective of companies’ carbon usage. 

Comparing the top metrics

How can a facilities manager navigate through this array of metrics and impending carbon regulation? Here is a comparison of these three top green metrics: 

  
Another business adage ‘if you don’t know what you have, how do you know that to do’is appropriate for assessing the carbon profile for each building. A facility manager’s first step will be to inventory buildings’ carbon emissions within the supply chain boundaries required.

In the end, FMs won't have a choice on how to measure carbon. They will need to salute whatever regulations come down the pike. But until regulators define the market and boundaries, there’s no easy answer about how to choose a green metrics system. The best approach for FMs to take right now is to gather information in a systematic way and hope that their data collection systems will match with the final state-wide and federal requirements.

Fred Klammt is principal of WinSol.org.  Carbon auditing and benchmarking is part of the sustainable management services this company provides.  For details please visit www.winsol.org