March Forum: DIY – Take your building’s energy pulse

The Green Building Forum is held on the third Wednesday of each month (except December) at 6:30 PM and features presentations by green building practitioners followed by discussion. The events are always free and open to the general public.

• When: Wed. March 18, from 6:30-8 pm
• Where: Trespa Showroom (62 Greene S, betw. Spring and Broome)

The first step in improving the energy performance of an existing building is to find out how the building is using energy and to identify the potential for improvement. The good news that we want to share with you at the March forum is that YOU can do this analysis yourself before you spend a dime on consultants or equipment! The March forum invites you to learn and apply the basics of benchmarking your building’s energy use. First, we’ll cover some terms and metrics that will help you understand the simple but illuminating benchmark model that Jeff Perlman will then show you how to use for your own building. Then, for those of you who live in buildings that burn heating oil, Henry Gifford will show you how to set up your oil tank to take regular readings of how much oil you burn. As “G.I. Joe” used to tell you on weekday afternoons: “knowing is half the battle!” Speaker bios and PowerPoint after the jump! Speakers: Henry Gifford has spent more than 25 years diagnosing and fixing dysfunctional, wasteful systems in apartment houses in New York City and designing new systems to avoid performance problems and energy waste. Henry’s buildings are widely regarded as being among the best performing in New York City. He’s long advocated that green buildings must measure and share their energy performance. Jeff Perlman is the President of Bright Power, an energy consultancy. Before founding Bright power, he co-authored (with Greg Kats at Capital E) “The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green Buildings”, a ground-breaking report used economic cost/benefit analysis to show that building healthy, energy-efficient, and environmentally responsible buildings make economic sense, too. He has a degree in Applied Physics from Yale University, and believes that buildings that do well are buildings that benchmark. Presentation: [slideshare id=1684528&doc=benchmarking-march2009-090705155258-phpapp01]