Revolutionizing the ‘E’ in ESG: Radical Climate Breakthroughs Taking Center Stage

Jenny Brusgal  00:00

Would like to introduce our next speaker, Robbie Davis, Senior Product Manager at Johnson Controls. Hi, Robbie.

Robbie Davis  00:06

Hi Danny. Thank you so much. It’s quite the video there. Yeah, all right. So just to kick off, so hi everybody. My name is Robbie Davis. I’m excited to be able to speak with you today. I am a Senior Product Manager for overglue, enterprise solutions focused on sustainability. So I got the privilege of working with our customers around the globe, creating new products and features to help them achieve their business goals and their sustainability objectives. So I’m excited to be able to share just some projects here. I’ll focus in. So let me click here and go to the next slide for us. Yeah. So, as we’ve mentioned before in Jenny’s opening, buildings are responsible for 40% of that total energy and emission profile for the world, right? So, and we hear this from our customers, and as Lincoln and Ali described, sustainability is a top priority, and it’s no surprise, because when we look across the marketplace, I think it’s almost half right now, the fortune 500 companies have a carbon neutral goal that they’ve established, and that’s according to the climate impact partners.

So one of our biggest objectives from jazz controls is to help our customers, and then, if I and then the world cut their energy and emissions through technology. And obviously we’ll have economic, environmental impacts and social so looking at so some of the aspects of open blue here, so as customers approach us, you know, there’s lots of different ways that we can make these reductions. We come back for a second. There we go. Our customers are looking to us, and we’ve collected a lot of projects, and we’ve had experience with decarbonization energy efficiency as kind of that leading edge water reduction strategies for lots of buildings, and we’re making a difference one building at a time.

 You know, really, by understanding where our customers are on that journey and building out a plan that incorporates the technology services, but in a lot of ways, just, in some cases, just having a person to call to ask questions. So when we look at kind of the building landscape, we meet our customers wherever they are on their sustainability or technology journey, from Legacy buildings to eventually, the more autonomous buildings that are starting to be introduced. So over the past five years here, we’ve implemented our solutions to 1000s of buildings across the world and enabling the adoption of energy management practices, helping calculate emissions and baseline facilities, running monitor based commissioning programs. And today we see most of our customers sit somewhere in between, kind of the connected buildings, where you have that building management system in place, but maybe it’s not. It’s only connected to a few aspects of your different systems within the building. And then we see some of these customers, as they start to they’re transitioning to more of that smart building, you know, where they have more of the AI being introduced, AI capabilities, but then also reaching out beyond the building to make sure that they have the appropriate data from maybe utility providers or weather sources. So the pattern that we’re seeing is customers are pushing to to the right customers want more and are seeking the solutions that will help them deliver these outcomes for sustainability and energy efficiency. So I talked today. So instead of talking and showing you everything that we can kind of deliver within open blue I want to walk you through a recent project that I’m personally proud of because it’s in my backyard in New York City.

So progress here, one too much. We come back, clicking too much. There we go. So this one is a premier biopharmaceutical provider. So they are just turned over a brand new building and a headquarter location, Class A office space in New York City. So when we first turned it over, what they approached us with was they were struggling that they had so much data. You can see that we were able to configure almost 30,000 points and trend in real time. And what they found was there are too many insights. It’s hard to figure out how to take action. So when we kicked off the sessions here, we basically repositioned ourselves, and we went back to the customer, sat with them, and then had insights meetings and really to uncover what exactly they were trying to achieve with the data that they pulled together and that we helped build with the backbone of the like an independent data layer. So, and what we did was we had through Configurable Components, put together virtual points, global point sharing, new dashboards and rules that aligned with their team to really build that cross functional data sets, so bringing together energy patterns, IQ trends, equipment statuses and occupancy. So some of these insights once we brought that all together. So in that insight, one here, what you can see is that we had a opportunity for optimal equipment start times. So if you look at that, it’s a little small, maybe, but there’s a blue line there.

You can see the occupancy transits as employees started to arrive at the building. And then all those other lines show the average zone temperature by floor, so you can see that separation there. So what they were doing is they were actually starting the building up almost an hour and a half earlier than those occupants arriving to the building. So clear opportunity to kind of adjust that a little bit closer, to tune that start time. Another insight that we found was the holiday schedules. So on, when we had the energy and occupancy data, we could create KPIs for consumption per capita. And then we we launched some some faults to be able to track that usage over time. And then we got a hit on June 19, so you can see that spike there on the top right. But this was a brand new holiday that the customer was recognizing, Juneteenth, and the building management system did not have that on the exception schedule. Another great insight that we had was creating that energy profiles for fan power boxes. So for every terminal box within the space, we were able to build out the electric profile, the thermal and then the total energy use. And when we had that, we could then do some peer analysis of these boxes. And one box stood out in particular, and the data was telling us that it was using almost 100% of its load all the time, you know, during these occupied times.

So when we sent the technician out there, what we found was the thermostat was mounted on an outside wall where there was outside air in the winter seeping through the wall and driving that temperature, or driving the box to basically overheat the space trying to meet the temperature. And then the last one, which I think Lincoln had mentioned this, this is a new event that we’re actually solve them for but you can see this nice in our 3d model for their spaces. We had a sharp uptick of the pm 2.5 or particulate matter that was coming into the spaces. So in New York City, we had the Canadian wildfires that were engulfing, really the Northeast. And what we had was, in New York City, it looked like the set of the latest dune movies, there was a orange haze across the whole entire city.

And what was happening here that we were learning the operators of is that the air handlers were still in economize remotes. We’re taking an outside air and spilling that into the spaces. So one to do was just kind of recycle that air and filter it through, but we were able to catch it early. So a lot of really specific use cases that we were able to enable due to the data and the technology. So overall, what we’re looking at here, we click once. So for the case study, this is still in the works. A lot of these have just come together over the past year, but again, the challenges for the new building here they were drowning in data. It’s really hard to find actionable insights that they could take advantage of. It’s highly relatable to a lot of our customer base. And then lessons learned here is basically looking to serve up the data to make sure that it’s really not a one size fits all.

Even though we provided the technology, we still need to make sure that we’re applying our expertise to the to solve the problems that our customers had. So overall, the solution here is having that common backbone and bringing that, marrying up that data, occupancy, HVAC and lighting, and then bringing that together, and what we’re expected to achieve here for a brand new building that just turned over 7% overall energy and emission savings that, you know, we’ll be launching a case study more publicly, and I’d say in the next few months here.

Jenny Brusgal  09:17

Thank you, Lincoln. Now that we have you here, I’d like to, I’d love to follow up with you around this smart community’s discussion to see you know what Stanford is doing and how they’ve created, you know, your own little smart city, and how that may be able to trickle into other neighboring cities, California.

Lincoln Bleveans  09:39

Yeah, no, it’s a great question, and something that we are honestly looking at. I wish we were further along, but as you, as folks might know, we have an 8000 plus acre campus, about 300 acres of which are the campus that everybody thinks of. But we’ve also. Got real estate holdings, for example, the Stanford wall, or some housing developments that we own outside of the historic campus and as real estate investments. And so one of the things that we’re looking at is, how do, first of all, how do we bring our sustainability ethos and practices to up to properties that we lease to others instead of, instead of occupy ourselves.

But then, how do we find ways to bring our neighboring communities into the innovations that we’ve done and into the progress that we’ve made. I wish I had a great answer to that. I would love if folks in the audience want to follow up and with ideas. I would really appreciate that. But there is a very, very strong desire, I think, particularly here in California, particularly on this peninsula that we’re on, to have more control over energy supply in general, which goes to community solar, it goes to distributed energy resources, but also have a lot more control over it in the built environment, and doing that in a way that is both cost effective and carbon effective. We’re just starting to explore that and but again, I would this is, I think this is a great opportunity for for a real crowdsourcing of solutions and examples. We certainly have as much to learn as we do, or much more to learn than we than we do to teach. So I would appreciate that as a continuing conversation.

Jenny Brusgal  11:51

Yeah, that’s why we have these types of webinars and conferences. I think it’s great to kind of bring these thought leaders and industry experts into the room and discuss, you know, lessons learned and and challenges and learn from each other, on to that. Ali, I wanted to ask you, like the audience, someone in the audience did have a question around how trio best is addressing plug load control automation as a demand reduction tool and and to kind of tie that in to, I know you mentioned using, you know, kind of a process to encourage different behavioral changes along with that, you know, what kind of, well, how are you doing that? And then I know we’ve all been talking about, kind of needing to get the right data set to do predictive analytics, to really do better AI and better technology equipment. You know, what kind of data set are you looking at, and what would you like to tap into, and how does that help with this kind of encouraging behavioral changes?

Ali Hoss  12:55

Okay, there’s a loaded question, but I tried Jenny. It’s a very good question, I think, first of all so from Newton technology in our building operation, to use technology at the property. We use fault detection diagnostics to really look at our pattern of consumption at the building level, at the near level, at the equipment level, to really understand, to set the baseline and look at the variance of consumption data and from performance perspective, to really flag opportunity in terms of why you’re not operating the property in a fashion that you’re supposed to operate. We use intelligent energy management system to really, not only tap into sort of demand and optimal facilities in some properties, we are using Demand Response Program to really understand and manage and measure, measure data. So I want to take a step back and give audience the opportunity to really, like appreciate then we are talking about AI. We are not talking about the same thing, right? Because people have a different perception of AI.

You have a different perception of what they can do. I think my experience, please, please don’t get super excited about technology first. So technology is a tool. How do you use it? Is very important and how you have a workforce claim to utilize technology in a very optimal fashion. So first, understand what data is important to you, what you want to achieve from analyzing data, get your Facebook baseline, check, understanding the workflows and then using technology to really automate the process gives you the ability to predict pattern of consumption or behavior. So some of the some of the metrics that they’re trying to correlate while building performance is like elevator use. Uh, occupancy and typical building operations like outdoor air temperature, humidity and irradiation of thought. So we are really trying to optimize that. For example, set point temperature.

Trying to optimize, if we are not women for cooling. Use free cooling. Specifically, camera is very prominent. So all in all that, my last point is understand, first, what you want to achieve, and understand what you have, what you don’t have, collect data and create a robust workflow to fully understand what needs to be done and assign different paths to different people, and then look for technologies to solve the problem. If you have a technology, you don’t have workflow, you don’t have a proper governance structure, basically, it’s going to be based off money.

Jenny Brusgal  15:55

Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. Your last point there, I think those are very good tangible advice for folks on the webinar. I want to turn my attention to Robbie for a second. You know, in your in your case study that you presented in New York City, you mentioned that projected 7% annual energy and emissions reduction. So some vendors are actually touting up to 30% annual energy reduction. Should we be skeptical of those numbers, or are they that should have been made possible today? Do you think?

Robbie Davis  16:30

No, I think that those savings are definitely achievable at 30% now, in my case study here again, this was a brand new building that was just turned over last year, so lots of efficient equipment control sequences that are in place, but still, what I wanted to highlight in this scenario is that there’s always opportunity for additional energy efficiency measures. Every building is different, and they evolve over time. So some of the case studies that you see in the market at 30% are better in those scenarios, maybe they’re not describing a brand new building, because they they are evolving. And as Lincoln mentioned, he’s got a it’s not a greenfield building campus, right?

There’s a lot of older buildings on that campus that need some attention, that are hard to kind of catch up. So teaching those old dog new tricks is something that you know, it takes a while to kind of integrate here, so depending on the age of the buildings and the newer applications that we can apply here, you know, we can kind of bring them along and achieve some of those higher savings measures. But as the performance starts to drift for this new building, I imagine, like in the future, we’re going to see things in my case study, like operator overrides equipment degradation over time, occupant patterns starting to shift right, and over time, it becomes harder to kind of maintain that efficiency of the building. So eventually, with some of the things that Ali has described, better applications for AI, doing monitor based commissioning continuously, and applying some of that automation, and obviously having a motivated team that’s willing to take action on that when the insights are pointed out that you can achieve some of those higher numbers.

Jenny Brusgal  18:16

Yeah, no, that’s, that’s a great point in terms of and we have, we actually have a question from the audience, and want to see if maybe Lincoln can take a first stab at it, given what you’ve done at Stanford. You know, for building decarbonization, HFC gasses emits 7% of carbon dioxide emissions. So how do you see the impact of these gasses in chillers? And how do you know? How do you implement green refrigerant in line with our sustainability criteria, it’s

Lincoln Bleveans  18:44

a huge question for us. Obviously, with our research our research community, refrigerants are, are everywhere, very, very big deal, and we really haven’t thought about them until now. We have just joined the Department of Energy’s Better Building Challenge and one of our big folk folks focuses, I’m just I know that’s not grammatical. One of our big focuses there is getting into this evolving community of thought and practice around refrigerants and greenhouse gasses. I am really looking forward to learning a lot more, but we’re really at the beginning of that. Having done we’ve done so much with scopes one and two on in terms of power generation and power supply, we’re down 80% from our peak in 2011 but we’re now looking at everything else, and refrigerants have come up as something that we really need to buckle down on, first from a learning perspective and then from an action perspective. And again, you know, probably a crowdsource. Solution, as opposed to something that we somehow invent here,

Jenny Brusgal  20:05

right? Yeah, again, something

Ali Hoss  20:10

to add to Lincoln, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a huge problem, and definitely cannot solve that problem overnight. So something I would suggest, if property owners operators. They pursue green building certifications, new certification, form of certification. So there are some policies they need to follow. And I think like they they need to take taken inventory of what kind of class of refrigerant they’re using in their killers or including equipment like the classic glass two, and mostly from our perspective, you’re migrating from r4 10, typically, like you use in the industry, to R 454, B that. But you have to be cautious. You have to be cautious because the more, the better the refrigerant you’re you you might lose on efficiency. So you need to be careful in terms of optimizing your migration process,

Jenny Brusgal  21:15

right? I want to hear from Raj around you know, you talked about very large and complex projects across the 1000s of buildings that you guys serve. How do you make sure there are, in fact, incremental savings year over year?

Raj Beniwal  21:35

That’s that’s a great question. So the way we typically handle, again, in a portfolio of buildings that are various different majority of the building equipment, you would have some buildings with relatively newer equipment type, and others not so much, and that gets upgraded over a period of time. So in addition to making this as a managed services and working with the customer on how they need to manage their energy, how they need to run their control system, we work with customers on whether they can improve their preventive maintenance cycles. So for a particular customer, we were able to reduce their four preventive maintenance cycles to one, and which was more condition based. Now that allows you to be more, I guess, be on the equipment side, right. Talk to the equipment, understand if it needs your help, and if it does, then you go and help that equipment. So if you’re able to go pinpointed and prescriptive in terms of what needs to happen, you do not need to run, let’s say, four cycles of pm at a time when the entire world wants to get the same technician on their roof. Right. If you go look for a typical preventive maintenance cycle.

For a single rooftop unit, it’s going to take about an hour or so. For 20 rooftops on your roof, that’s going to take three to four days. The technician is on your roof for four hours. So you might want to give them a little more insight on where they can do a visual inspection versus where they would go and do perform the entire thing, and have some of it done based on your regular repair maintenance visits itself. So it’s it’s lot of those incremental fixing of issues, and being more specific on the on the equipment’s health, is how we were able to increase the and plus the savings that you get can be reinvested to upgrade again in a more pointed manner, specific assets that are consuming more energy or are a bigger problem. From an operations perspective, you’re hearing more from those locations in terms of, I’m hot, I’m cold, where we are blind if the equipment is not communicating, and stuff like that. So 50 different initiatives, each contributing 2.2% in energy consumption or reduction of the consumption.

Jenny Brusgal  24:22

Great. Thank you. We have an interesting question coming in from the audience around the human element, which I’d like to see maybe Ali can address initially. But you know, everyone talks about technology and service provider solutions, so how much is the training of building operators really the key factor here that needs to empathy emphasize more in order to see some of these improvements in our buildings. So Ali, do you want to take a stab at that in terms of what you’re seeing in your in your

Ali Hoss  24:58

portfolio? Sure. So. I think it’s a matter of like a controlling strategy, specifically building automation system. Sometimes, like, based on my experience, you look at the set point temperature based on dry bulb temperature, outside air temperature, but sometimes you have to look at the enthalpy based controlling mechanism. Basically, a loop taking into account humidity, something we embarked on a sort of like a pilot project about a year and a half ago. So typically you have will have a one set point temperature for water supply, like summer time, winter time, shoulder seasons and but we know that today could be raining.

Tomorrow could be SunShot, and specifically in Canada, you have a fluctuation of temperature so drastically from one day to another. So having a static set point temperature is not a it’s not a very like a, it’s not a good solution. So you’re exhausting technology, and look at humidity, look at outside temperature, look at the CO two concentration, and all sort of other metrics, including what is a cloudy day, sunny day, and adjusting set point temperature in a boundary that is acceptable from semi comfort on a five minute interval. So it’s a pilot project. So far, we have basically seen about five to 8% saving on a heating side and about like three to 4% saving on electricity consumption side. But we are at an earlier stage, but we’re going to get into that.

Robbie Davis  26:48

If I could just add to that, I think I mean, great overview here. I’m just saying, like, want to add on the from the training side. You know, I think it’s so critical as we’re merging these technologies and trying to help customers make decisions, and deploying this to make customers are make buildings smarter. Having a comprehensive like training program and continuous support for this staff is so critical. And I think of an example we had, it was also in New York City a few years ago, and we were presenting one of our more, more advanced solution earlier, AI product that would basically make most of the decision using a command control Well, basically controlled a complete central plant for the building, and we were sitting with the union, And the union basically said we explained all these great algorithms and how we would make all the decisions and all the change points within 15 minute intervals, considering weather and set points. And at the end of the presentation, the union said, there’s no technology out there that can run this plant better than me. And that kind of like input. It’s like, it’s the training is something that can help, kind of curb that team and help them better understand that it’s really a the it’s a better together story, rather than it’s a technology versus my job, right?

Jenny Brusgal  28:16

Yes, that’s a good point. You know, we hear all the time about the fear of AI replacing humans, and I think that’s a great example of how we can really foster the technology, with the with the training that’s provided to to the workforce, and how that can really come together and make a more stronger platform. So Ravi, I’m not wanted to also turn our attention to regulations, which we haven’t really talked too much about with the continuous evolution of regulations and building performance standards across the different jurisdictions. What would you advise customers who need to meet these requirements, and how do your solutions support compliance?

Robbie Davis  29:03

Yeah, great, great question here. So as far as kind of what the evolving regulations and disclosure building standards that are rolling across the US, I would simply advise that to stay proactive and continue to kind of leverage all the resources that you can to stay up to date. You know, I continue to see evolving requirements. You know, with a lot of our customers submitted to Crespi, there a lot of customers in the US are making sure that they can submit it to ENERGY STAR so they can comply with a lot of the building performance standards. And I think, being up to date and then also having the solutions to aggregate the data, to be flexible in pulling together the information that you need to submit into these different entities and bodies, and also maintain your performance against either these regulations or penalties that you may incur this. Just so important, so finding the right solutions to enable that and try to stay in front of the curve, which is not easy. Here is a way to, kind of, you know, position yourself and basically future proof some of these evolving regulations over time.

Jenny Brusgal  30:18

Yeah, if this is diverted to fill out all the regulations. So Lincoln, I wanted to actually ask you a quick regulatory question, and then maybe you can provide some insights and examples to the training human and operator, the training operator question that we just discussed. But what do you think is the likelihood that regulatory bodies impacts some of these standards that are evolving. We don’t, if we don’t need our 2035

Lincoln Bleveans  30:47

Well, I’m, I’m a little bit, little bit pessimistic on that, or maybe, maybe realistic. I don’t know. We tend to establish goals that as a I think this is human nature that are far enough in the future that we don’t have to immediately worry about them, and then all of a sudden, the future is the present, and we haven’t reached those yet. I think it’s going to be a and I think it has to be a process of iterative goal setting and adjustments as we get there, and ultimately to the point where I think this becomes reality, that we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the very, very, very good. For example, if that last 3% of decarbonization is 15 times more expensive than the first 97% maybe we live with that and we do other things instead that are more cost effective, for example or less impactful. So I think my experience with regulators is that you can educate them to a certain point during the regulatory development process, and that is absolutely vital. If you’re not, we used to say this in New York. I don’t know if it’s still a if it’s a national thing, but if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. And so I really encourage very strong participation in in the regulatory process, but then knowing that if we’re all leaning in and we’re all getting heading in the direction of the goal.

My experience is that, and my hope is that we will. It’s more important to be heading in that direction and get really close than it is to cross some magical line. And I think that is especially important as we for example, with renewable energy in the system, we get beyond the point where renewable energy is noise and into the point where it actually really affects system operations and adds costs. So that’s my my, my quick thought on that. But I would really encourage a going back to what Robbie said about being proactive, being, being at the table for that regulatory development process, and even further back in the legislative development process, you can, if you’re if you come at those processes with an open mind, but also with a solid story to tell. You can often move the needle in a way, away from being

Ali Hoss  33:26

well, towards realism in the ultimate regulation

Lincoln Bleveans  33:29

that you’re then going to have to comply with. I did want to say a quick thing about on the operator side. We’ve had some very vivid examples of that actually using Johnson Controls, controls in our thermal plant, and we do have aI functionality. It is really, really helpful to our operators. But what we found is that the best solution is that co pilot sort of solution, because the operators can react to things that are happening in real time in a way that AI, being more of a summary of the past, has a hard time doing. But even more than that, when you get a when you get into a situation where all of a sudden, say the power goes out, or, just hypothetically, somebody who doesn’t know quite what they’re doing unplugs something or switches off something that turns off your control system. You need the operators there, and they’ve got to do it. They’ve got to be able to do everything, even if AI can be a help in getting that done.

Jenny Brusgal  34:44

Do we have a quick minute chuck or

Moderator  34:46

let’s hear from Ali and and Raj

Jenny Brusgal  34:54

regulatory environment?

Ali Hoss  34:57

My My point is like as we. Lincoln and Ronnie suggested, don’t wait for regulation, be proactive. So for such a long time in real estate industry, after the clash of 2008 it was an easy why if you buy, hold, wait couple of years, sell the property, reposition the property, and get the off site and go out and make reinvestment. Now you have to differentiate your asset management practice, property management practice, and use decarbonization, sustainability and technology integration of a multi differentiator. So if there is no way you can implement a project at the property, or decarbonize the property, irrespective of regulation. You’re not going to do that, and you’re going to pay the penalty. But I think when you can make a difference is to be proactive, to look at the technology solution, to go outside of the box, and irrespective of is going to be mandatory tomorrow or 10 years from now, if you can create value, I think you’re going to be far ahead of the market if you start from now and future proof, you’re out. All right. Raj, 30 seconds,

Moderator  36:10

your final thought in Connor,

Raj Beniwal  36:12

actually, actually, I think I’ll just double down on the same point. Actually, do not wait for regulation. Most of the energy related projects, maintenance related projects, have a payback that’s going to be much better than many of the other projects that your finance organization is going evaluating. So go out there, talk to your finance organization, let them know that this is a project that has a good payback. So I guess run after the money, and you’re likely going to be able to get a much better comfort and operational environment in your buildings. And I mean the maintenance side of the equation with newer technologies, AI and some of these IoT packages that are coming up, technology has gone down in cost fairly significantly. The payback as of 10 years back versus today, is a very different situation. Do not look at your past. Call it capital project rejection or an operational expense project rejection as a background to what you are going to go propose today to your finance organization. Good

Moderator  37:28

advice. Good advice for everyone, yeah, yeah. Well, let’s close out. Thank you, Jenny, so much again for helping us out with the moderate. Nice job. Nicely done. Good pivot for what, for what we had to accomplish today. So thank you all to the panelists for your contributions today. Really do appreciate that, and really thanks a lot too, for the the audience questions, for being so active again. It’s always, always makes it so much better. And whether you’ve joined us live or you’re watching this as a recording, thank you for tuning in. Just be sure to visit realcom.com to register for our next webinar. It’s maintaining a strong innovation profile even when budgets are tight. Great panel. You see them. They’re going to be a fantastic discussion. And a new opportunity is called electrify. It’s the smart DC powered buildings that’s in Fort Worth Texas, September, 23 and 24th I won’t go into detail here. Check out realcom.com. For the details. That’s it for us. Thanks for everything. We wish you well be safe.

Jenny Brusgal  38:33

Thanks all. Thank you.