RMI’s latest report shows how large portfolio managers can unlock immense opportunities to save energy and money through grid-interactive efficient buildings

Denver, Colorado – 20 August 2019

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) officially launches its report detailing the opportunity behind grid-integrated efficient buildings (GEBs) at the Energy Exchange conference in Denver, Colorado, today. RMI’s recent report highlights the core ways that the US General Services Administration (GSA) could leverage its size, its leadership in the industry, and its relationships with utilities and regulators to save money, energy, and carbon across its portfolio.

A grid-interactive efficient building is an efficient building with smart technologies characterized by the active use of energy efficiency, solar, storage, and load flexibility to optimize energy use for grid services, occupant needs and preferences, and cost reductions. GEB measures go far beyond today’s energy management best practices. They focus on demand and the time value of energy to reduce grid constraints and enable decarbonization. A focus on GEBs optimizes benefits like cost savings, grid services, resiliency, and carbon emissions reductions.

The report, Value Potential for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings in the GSA Portfolio: A Cost-Benefit Analysis, details how GEBs could unlock $50 million in annual cost savings to the GSA and $70 million in societal value to grid users by reducing generation, transmission, and distribution costs, benefiting all ratepayers. By investing in GEB measures, developing GEB pilots, and helping the industry understand and measure the opportunities inherent in GEBs, the GSA or any large portfolio manager can unlock an immense opportunity to save energy and money while supporting the decarbonization of our electricity sector.

The Energy Exchange is a three-day federal educational and peer-networking event with more than 100 training sessions, over a dozen plenary speakers, 13 technical education tracks, a trade show, and the opportunity to interact with the larger federal energy- and water-management community. RMI is presenting in two sessions on Wednesday August 21—Designs for Resilience and Grid-Interactive Buildings and Deep Energy Retrofits.

“Buildings drive up to 80 percent of the peak demand on the grid, so they’re key to balancing the grid. There needs to be a greater dialogue between buildings and the grid if we want to transition from today’s energy management practices to true grid integration that provides load flexibility to the grid and greater monetary value to building owners,” says Cara Carmichael, a principal at RMI and coauthor of the report, who will be presenting at the Energy Exchange on deep retrofits.

“The GSA is could pioneer opportunities in the GEBs space and start the national conversation with utilities and grid operators. This report’s findings reach far beyond the GSA, providing lessons that could help any commercial building owner to unlock the cost-, energy-, and carbon-savings potential of grid-interactive efficient buildings,” says Matt Jungclaus, a manager at RMI and coauthor of the report, who will be presenting on GEBs at the Energy Exchange.

About RMI

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)—an independent nonprofit founded in 1982—transforms global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future. It engages businesses, communities, institutions, and entrepreneurs to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions that cost-effectively shift from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables. RMI has offices in Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New York City; the San Francisco Bay Area; Washington, D.C.; and in Beijing, People’s Republic of China

Media Enquiries
Nick Steel, Manager – Media Relations
T: +1 347-574-0887
E: nsteel@rmi.org