Shorenstein Properties – Laura Michela – 2015

Goals

Laura Michela spent her summer fellowship with Shorenstein Realty Services, a private real estate investment and management firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. Michela worked closely with the sustainability program manager on a variety of projects supporting Shorenstein’s many sustainability initiatives. Some of these included water management, tenant engagement, LED retrofit opportunities, utility reporting, building energy performance modeling and strategy for energy efficiency project process improvement.

Solutions

To support Shorenstein’s goal of a six percent reduction in water consumption by 2016, Michela developed a water performance assessment tool to identify water efficiency opportunities across the portfolio. She also developed a nationwide matrix of rebate incentives and designed a calculator to estimate the financial and energy savings of LED retrofits. She then worked with property managers to identify potential LED retrofit opportunities at their properties. Finally, with building occupants determining 60 to 80 percent of a building’s energy use, she spent a great deal of time during her fellowship making enhancements to Shorenstein’s tenant engagement presentation through the addition of the latest climate science and actions tenants can take to improve the sustainability of their operations.

Potential Impact

After compiling detailed water end use information for each property, Michela recommended a water infrastructure investment strategy for reducing water use by 22 million gallons annually, representing operating cost savings of over $200,000 per year. The nationwide matrix and calculator she created allowed Michela to estimate that LED retrofits could save the Shorenstein portfolio 16 million kilowatt hours of electricity, $2 million and 11,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. In addition, her work enhancing Shorenstein’s signature “Flip the Switch” tenant engagement program should help reinforce and continue Shorenstein’s recognized position as an innovator in sustainability programming for commercial office tenants.