It takes a motivated board — or at least one motivated board member — to jump-start energy reduction projects. That describes a Bronx board president, who not only wanted to improve his building’s energy performance but also wanted to reduce the operating costs for shareholders. Thomas Morrison, director of energy management at the engineering firm En-Power Group, describes how this mission was accomplished in an interview with Bill Morris of Habitat Magazine.
Thanks for listening. Subscribe to this podcast for more stories on how New York co-ops and condos have solved a myriad of problems. Brought to you by Habitat Magazine, the "bible" that hundreds of board directors turn to every day!
It takes a motivated board — or at least one motivated board member — to jump-start energy reduction projects. That describes a Bronx board president, who not only wanted to improve his building’s energy performance but also wanted to reduce the operating costs for shareholders. Thomas Morrison, director of energy management at the engineering firm En-Power Group, describes how this mission was accomplished in an interview with Bill Morris of Habitat Magazine.
Thanks for listening. Subscribe to this podcast for more stories on how New York co-ops and condos have solved a myriad of problems. Brought to you by Habitat Magazine, the "bible" that hundreds of board directors turn to every day!
Bill Morris: Welcome back to Habitat's Problem Solved series in which we look at co-op and condo boards facing various challenges and how their professionals help them solve those challenges. I'm Bill Morris, and with me today is Thomas Morrison, the director of energy management at the ENPOWER Group. Thanks for joining us, Tom.
Thomas Morrison: Hey, Bill. Thanks for having me. Really excited to discuss energy efficiency today.
Bill Morris: Well, speaking of energy efficiency, I understand you have a client in the Bronx: a small co-op that had a low C energy efficiency grade, which is better than most. I mean, most buildings got a D. And yet they were not quite happy with that. Tell me, how did this thing get rolling? There was a project that got off the ground. How did it start?
Thomas Morrison: Yeah, Bill, thanks again for having me. And as you said, we have a 70-unit co-op in the heart of the South Bronx and they were facing rising energy costs, a poor letter grade with a low C, and penalties for Local Law 97. And they wanted to do something about that not only to reduce those penalties and improve their letter grade, but more importantly, to reduce those operating costs to the shareholders so the building could maintain its affordability for working families. They had a very active board president, Derek Jones, who was incredibly motivated to tackle these issues, reduce energy costs, and really, he wanted to make his building an example for how existing in older buildings, particularly in the Bronx, could be energy-efficient and could be seen as green. So knowing that they had strong motivation to act, we, along with a number of a couple of other contractors, worked with them to implement and identify various energy efficiency measures to help reduce their energy usage and operating costs.
Bill Morris: Tom, before you get into the specifics, let me ask you a question. In your business, do you find that in most buildings, there's a person, an individual, an energetic personality that makes these things happen on co-op and condo boards? Is that typical?
Thomas Morrison: Absolutely. We typically find that a lot of the projects, especially ones that are multi-pronged where they undergo several energy conservation measures, are usually driven by the board or individual members within the board, and those are our biggest allies and then biggest proponents at the building level, because there's always going to be residents that push back, and we can only do so much on the engineering side. And it's really the people that have to face the backlash and turn that backlash into optimism for energy efficiency projects because there's always some trepidation by the residents, whether they have to pay for their electric bill or they think that the heat will be less or some other areas of comfort or economic reasons why they may not want these projects to move forward.
Bill Morris: So in the South Bronx co-op, you had this catalyst on the board who got the thing rolling. Now tell me about the specifics. What exactly did you recommend that they do to bring that letter grade up and those energy costs down?
Thomas Morrison: We made a number of recommendations and the building actually moved forward with several of those energy conservation measures. At the heart of the project was a conversion from oil to natural gas, and that included both a boiler upgrade as well as installing a separate domestic hot water heating system so that they could run the hot water heater only during the non-heating months and then also run the boiler and hot water heater during the winter, which provides significant energy savings.
Thomas Morrison: They also installed enhanced boiler controls with indoor temperature sensors throughout the building. And then they additionally upgraded the common area lighting to LED. They did a number of other projects, including a rooftop solar array as well as finally what was just finished at the end of last year was a submetering installation. So now the residents were and are paying for their electricity consumption, which in its own also drives energy conservation by individual residents who want to reduce their own energy bills.
Bill Morris: Now, this is quite a smorgasbord you're talking about here. This is soup to nuts. How did they pay for this rather extensive list of retrofits?
Thomas Morrison: Yeah, so like most co-ops and condos, they typically have two avenues to go down. My experience and what they did here was that they recapitalized their mortgage to free up some capital to invest in these energy efficiency measures so that they didn't have to increase maintenance or have special one-time assessments. And Bill, I'm actually not done with what these guys are doing. On the in-unit level, they've had several programs where they've worked with Con Edison and the multifamily energy efficiency program to bring Con Edison down there. And the residents are able to swap out their light bulbs for LED light bulbs. They've also gotten replacement showerheads and aerators, and that has been done on an individual unit or resident level. And right now, they're also going through Energy Star certification to actually designate the building as a Energy Star-certified building or a green building. They had not been eligible for that certification prior to all these efficiency measures being implemented.
Bill Morris: Well, now this is a nice success story. We hear about a lot of trepidation on the parts of co-op and condo boards. In fact, we did a story just yesterday. A lot of boards are terrified by the Climate Mobilization Act and the changes that they're going to have to make. And yet, this rather modest South Bronx co-op managed to succeed. What's the message here, Tom? What can you tell boards that are shaking in their boots about these fines that are looming in 2024 and again in 2030?
Thomas Morrison: Yeah. This story I think is a good highlight of what co-op boards working with an engineering firm can do. Some of these projects were certainly modest capital projects, but they weren't electrification of the whole building. They utilized existing systems without making drastic changes. They did these projects over time, over several years. And all these projects had payback periods that were in the order of about five or so years. That all was very attractive to the board and the shareholders to make these changes. And they've seen really significant results. In 2017, they had a low C with an Energy Star score of a 58. And in 2021 that score improved to a 94, which puts them in the A category. They've seen an overall reduction of about 30% of their energy usage and a complete elimination of penalties with Local Law 97, both in 2024 and 2030.
Bill Morris: Well, now that is a wonderful success story that was not done, I'm not going to say on the cheap, but it was done with a minimum amount of pain. Well, we always like to hear success stories. Thomas Morrison from the ENPOWER Group. Thank you so much. That's an uplifting and informative story. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Thomas Morrison: Thank you Bill, for having me. Great talking to you.