Intelligent Lighting Controls Deliver ROI in 3 Years

October 16, 2009

More building owners and managers are considering intelligent lighting systems to cut energy use because lighting, on average, accounts for approximately one-quarter of a building’s overall electricity use, rivaled only by HVAC and office equipment, according to Gary Meshberg, LEED, AP, and director of sales for Encelium Technologies .

State-of-the-art lighting systems reduce costs, demonstrate an overall commitment to being environmentally friendly, as well as contribute toward higher building values, higher tenant retention rates and overall end-user satisfaction, said Meshberg.

As an example, Encelium Technologies’ Energy Control System (ECS) uses addressable networking technology in combination with advanced control hardware and software, which can be integrated with HVAC, security and irrigation systems.

ECS uses a universal I/O (input/output) module to connect to standard lighting components such as low-voltage non-dimming ballasts, and occupancy sensors or photo sensors for digital control capabilities. The system allows each person to control his or her own workspace light levels from their desktop computer, and provides facility managers with energy management capabilities.

Installation of an intelligent lighting system also provides a significant return on investment (ROI), said Meshberg. He cites the following example. ECS installations, which cost between $3.00 and $3.50 per square foot for existing space, are designed to reduce lighting-related energy costs by 50 to 75 percent, so the projected savings of 75 cents to $1.25 per square foot per year means that the installation cost is amortized in less than three years.

As an example, the Rogers Centre sports and entertainment complex in Toronto, with approximately 7,000 light fixtures, cut its energy use by 77 percent, or by 3,731,000 KWh annually, with an ECS installation, according to Meshberg. The complex also achieved a 39 percent reduction in energy demand and a savings of 76 percent for energy costs. This translates into a cost savings of about $300,000 per year for the complex.

Meshberg also said ECS installations ease the way for buildings to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental (LEED) certification, contributing up to 18 points needed for certification, as well as facilitate a building’s compliance with ASHRAE 90.1, EPAct, Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations and various utility rebate programs.

The Next Evolution in Economics: Rethinking Growth

1:30 PM Wednesday August 19, 2009
by Stan Stalnaker

The credit crunch has forced people across many sectors to rethink their assumptions about how they do business, the roles of the individual in the larger system, and the very future of the system itself.

These reflections are beginning to bear fruit. We've begun to see a shift from the old, linear transaction-based approach to business toward a new, circular view, in which shared resources can better benefit all in a way that adds depth (and value) to this future economy.

Economists describe this new model in many ways. One way is to use human cellular structures as a metaphor for economic growth. Call it cellular economic theory.

What do cells tell us about business? Well, consider that cells that grow continually and exponentially (like we've been taught our economies should grow) are a form of cancer. We know intuitively and logically that continuous growth can't be sustained in living things. It's likewise unsustainable (and undesirable) in business.

But that's our current model--to just keep growing. And in this model there's no alternative to growth, only stagnation which leads to death. The result of this is policy at every level (micro, macro, corporate and public) that champions growth at all costs.

Cellular economic theory suggests an alternative to linear growth: circular growth. In the body, cells grow. Cells die. New cells grow. New cells die. On and on. We sustain ourselves through regeneration. In business, a form of staged, regenerative growth could become the norm. The growth may not even change the size of the "economic body."

Here, growth is not seen as the ultimate byproduct of an economic life cycle, but just an important one. Growth becomes one of several life cycle stages that are primarily about replenishment. Instead of growing in size and scope, companies grow in capabilities, processes and offerings. New ones come along. Old ones dies. Just like cells, growth becomes regenerative--only what needs replacing is replaced, reducing waste and improving society along the way.

For example, a brewery in India is using cellular economic thinking to grow its bottom line without producing and selling more beer. Instead it's using chaff and grain detritus to create fertilizer and biofuels--regenerating resources to lower their own production costs while widening the life cycles of their inputs.

KATIKA, a Swiss wood furniture maker, is reforesting at a rate greater than their production, using profits from their sales today to ensure the availability of resources later. In the meantime, their reforestation projects create local jobs and other sustainable benefits (home for wildlife and food, CO2 reduction) while increasing the value of formerly degraded land holdings.

In a cellular economy, key metrics change. GDP growth is less important than GDP regeneration. Successful growth takes into account the sustainability of that growth.

The most profound change in a cellular economy is the devaluation of the transaction. Today, economic value is determined primarily by the value of the transaction. To grow (even just to survive), we must keep trading, keep consuming--no matter how wasteful the process becomes--because success is creating more transactions. This keeps us locked into a linear, growth oriented paradox.

Fortunately, (if not painfully), the Internet is exposing the impossibility of sustaining a transaction-based economy. As the net drives the cost of certain goods and services toward zero, it strips profit from transactions.

In publishing, for example, the cost of information is falling while sources multiply. Same for music and other creative enterprises. Same for micro-lending versus traditional banking. Fashion and retail. Oil. Anywhere there's a middle man between the natural resource and the end consumer, the Internet is obviating the need for the middle man.

And, in place of transactions and supply chains (which are, essentially, series of middle men), communities are gaining leverage and power from these shared commodities like news and gas.

A low-level web of constant relationships, circular, cellular systems where shared, collaborative contributions are the norm, is developing. Here, the value resides with relationships, not transactions. Maybe, instead of buying and selling more and more in a mad race for grabbing the most growth, the future will be about a collaborative, community-oriented regenerative growth model.

This "economy of shares" relies on crowd-sourced contributions, a free market, and a fair dose of incentives for sustainability. When it becomes bad business to waste resources in pursuit of profit, then the regenerative model takes hold and we can kiss goodbye to the things we know we don't need but can't seem to give up. Wasteful packaging. Super-sized food portions. Environmentally damaging newspapers. Gas-guzzling SUVs.

Eventually, in a regenerative economy, we learn to focus on kaizen --constant improvements, as opposed to an ever expanding volume of low-quality transactions and markets. Call it the co-op economy. It's the kind of economic system we always say we want but can't bring ourselves to build.

If the experts are right and we do indeed need to find more sustainable ways of living, and the bankers are right in saying that we have to live within our means, and the technologists are right saying that collaborative systems are the future, then it stands to reason that the next evolution in economics is to a more natural, life-like system.

We are moving to a world where transactions will happen instantly, on demand, for free. We are moving to a time when transactions can't sustain an economy. We are realizing all systems are like biological systems--even economic ones. Growth-at-all-costs business is malignant.

It's time to apply that broad realization in new ways to the situation at hand.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/08/a-new-approach-to-economics.html

Stan Stalnaker is the Founder and Creative Director of Hub Culture Ltd , a social network that merges online and physical world environments.

Keeping it local

Jul 30th 2009 | AUSTIN
From The Economist print edition

A rising vogue for shopping near home

IN 2002 the city of Austin planned to extend about $2m in incentives to a developer who wanted to build a new Borders bookstore on a prominent downtown corner. This was an unpleasant prospect for the owners of two local independent businesses, BookPeople and Waterloo Records. If the deal had gone through they would have faced a big competitor located directly across the street. Steve Bercu, the owner of BookPeople, says that he always assumed that local businesses were better for Austin for sound economic reasons. But in the circumstances, he wanted to test the proposition.

So BookPeople and Waterloo called in Civic Economics, a consultancy. They went through the books and found that for every $100 spent at the two locals, $45 stayed in Austin in wages to local staff, payments to other local merchants, and so on. When that sum went to a typical Borders store, only $13 went back into circulation locally.


Although the study was part-funded by BookPeople and Waterloo it gave a boost to the growing “buy local” movement in America. For years business and community leaders have been full of reasons for people to do their shopping close to home. They say that local and independent businesses have more individual character, and that they are owned by your friends and neighbours. Some stores, particularly grocers, point out that it takes much less carbon to haul a truck from a few towns over than from halfway across the country.

At the moment, the economic argument has special traction. Dan Houston, a partner at Civic Economics, says that in recent studies he has found that locally-owned businesses put about twice as much money back into the community as the chains do, not three times, as the Austin study found. But that is still enough of a “local multiplier” to catch people’s attention. Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Portland, Maine, reckons that some 30,000 local independents have joined about 130 independent business alliances around the nation.

Big companies are taking note that customers are rooting for the home team. Ms Mitchell points to a telling development in Seattle, Washington, where Starbucks got its start. On July 24th the company opened a new coffee shop there. The newcomer is not called a Starbucks; it is called “15th Ave. Coffee & Tea”. It promises “a deep connection to the local community,” and its seats are recycled from a local theatre.

There is an insular element to the trend. “Is it pure local protectionism? Sure, to some extent it is,” says Mr Houston. But the advocates are not zealots. One national campaign is asking people to shift a mere 10% of their spending to local outfits.

The Borders project in Austin eventually fell through, and the proposed site is now occupied by the flagship of Whole Foods Market. The chain was founded in Austin and is local in a sense, although it is now publicly traded. Throughout the shop, produce advertises its credentials: local, organic, fairly traded, made in-house, vegan, and so on. This week its customers faced an ethical dilemma: is it better to buy the organic watermelon from California, or the conventionally-grown kind from Lexington, Texas?