Example: Calculating the carbon footprint of the real estate portfolio
Executives at Company XYZ are interested in determining the current carbon footprint of the real estate portfolio. The goal is to use this information to identify cost-effective environmental opportunities to reduce the impact and cost of workplace assets on the environment.
To calculate the carbon footprint of the real estate portfolio, Gary Green, environmental manager for Company XYZ, plans to use TRIRIGA® Real Estate Environmental Sustainability. Gary uses TRIRIGA to collect and analyze the environmental data.
Step 1: Collecting real estate portfolio information
To get started, Gary must collect the following basic information about the real estate portfolio:- The measurements of the area of each building in the real estate portfolio, including details about the floors and spaces, such as offices and meeting rooms
- The percent of occupancy of each building
- The geographical region of each building
The geographical regions in which the spaces are located are important to determine the correct emissions factors to use in the carbon calculations. Because Company XYZ is in the US, the emissions factors are based on the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) regions and the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) subregions. To accurately compare the efficiency of buildings that are in different climates, you must consider the geographic location.
Gary uses the TRIRIGA application to create location records for the real estate portfolio. Gary creates location records for buildings, floors, and spaces. To gather the information, Gary meets with a facilities manager, a financial officer, and the real estate department.
The greatest challenge in calculating the carbon footprint is to collect the environmental data. Gary spends months collecting and entering information in order to have enough data to accurately benchmark the carbon footprint.
Step 2: Creating climate logs
Gary creates climate logs for each facility to normalize data from month to month and year to year. Normalized data shows whether the carbon footprint is affected by global warming or daily temperatures. The data shows whether the HVAC equipment or any of the assets in a facility are inefficient. If the data points to inefficient equipment, Gary can request an inspection.
To find information about the heating and cooling degree days for a location, Gary searches for a nearby weather station. To save time, Gary configures a list of weather stations in TRIRIGA and associates the stations with the location records. Gary contacts IBM Global Business Services to help set up an integration between a weather data source and TRIRIGA. After the integration is complete, TRIRIGA automatically creates the climate logs for all of the locations at the chosen interval.
Step 3: Populating energy logs
- Some utility companies allow customers to connect to their billing systems. For locations that use these utility companies, Gary uses the IBM® TRIRIGA Connector for Business Applications tool to integrate TRIRIGA directly with the utility company. The TRIRIGA system receives the data about energy use and automatically creates the energy logs.
- For locations that cannot be integrated with a data source, Gary enters the information from the paper utility bills into TRIRIGA. Rather than entering the data directly into energy logs, Gary enters the data into a utility invoice form. When the utility invoices are approved, TRIRIGA creates the energy logs.