What does it take to turn an ordinary office building into an energy-efficient workspace?

Great question! And here’s how Hawaiian Airlines answered it on their Mana’o blog.

Following our March 2019 “co-pilot” with the airline, their editors took readers behind the scenes at Airport Center, a 14-story multi-tenant office building located near Hawaiian’s HQ. We think it’s a great step-by-step account of how Carbon Lighthouse engineers work their energy efficiency magic. As the writer points out, our strategy is simple — create new building value by cutting carbon. But the properties we work in actually “undergo a meticulous data-driven analysis to understand the unique characteristics of a building to guarantee long-term, sustainable results.”

Our Energy Efficiency Process

It’s a technology-first approach that unleashes our patented CLUES® AI technology platform to model thousands of energy scenarios and arrive at the most effective financial and climate solutions for the building.In this building, we expect to cut about 654,000 kWh per year, the equivalent of powering 80 homes annually.It all starts with crunching billions of actual data points — not generic models or rough estimates — to guarantee maximum financial value with incredible accuracy.

In addition to our proprietary historical performance data aggregated across 700+ building assets, we attach discreet sensors to monitor everything from HVAC system flow rate, water temperature and power consumption, to generators, lighting and occupancy.All this data helps us uncover hidden inefficiencies, model thousands of possible actions to maximize ROI and manage the entire process — with zero disruption to tenants, staff and guests.

“The progress is both rewarding to me personally and to everyone at the company,” said Louis Concato, executive account manager at Carbon Lighthouse. “It’s awesome to see a company, whose core is not real estate, invest in this initiative.”

At Carbon Lighthouse Hawai’i, we’re excited to grow our partnerships with Hawaiian Airlines and a thriving group of clients on the islands, including Alexander & Baldwin, Royal Lahaina Resort, Westin Maui Resort & Spa, The Shidler Group, Elemental Excelerator and Ulupono Initiative.