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Kerry Meade on the importance of local leadership, especially now.
Show host Jeff Nichols speaks with Kerry Meade, the Executive Director of Seattle’s leading energy efficiency trade organization, Building Potential. Hear what Kerry thinks about the implications for building owners committed to energy efficiency, smart building technology, and other clean energy investments now that a new administration has been sworn in. For building owners and stakeholders already committed to transitioning their buildings and operations to renewable energy sources, is this a moment of pause or an opportunity for acceleration? Kerry explains why now is the ideal time for local market education and leadership to unlock and align regional players with mutual interests in sustainable energy infrastructure investment and development.
Local Matters
Jeff and Kerry discuss the critical role of trade organizations, like Building Potential, in building a broader coalition of local governments and private businesses by partnering to develop energy policy and standards. They talk about the other players in this equation–and the importance of aligning with entities like public utilities (PUDs) to support and help drive the adoption of renewable power generation and distribution. Kerry underscores the value of these local partnerships along with energy service companies (ESCOs) who have the expertise to help stakeholders accelerate their adoption of clean building standards while helping to demystify the perceived difficulty and complexity of energy-saving retrofits.
Some Needed Disruption
We live in an electrified future with demand only growing and putting more pressure on both the supply and demand side of our energy infrastructure. Kerry addresses the pressing question of what role the private sector can play in accelerating innovation and investment in clean energy infrastructure. With weather patterns becoming more severe and unpredictable, it’s imperative to work towards decentralizing energy storage and transmission in partnership with local utilities that are bound by Federally established standards. How is the private sector uniquely positioned to disrupt the status quo and play a larger and more vital role in the future of sustainability? Kerry sees the future through the lens of what is possible bolstered by the reality that both blue and red states are working to achieve greater energy reliability and beginning to see the real economic benefits from their transition to a more sustainable future.
- Follow Jeff on LinkedIn
- Follow Kerry on LinkedIn
- Get more info about Washington state’s Clean Building Performance Standards.
- Learn about energy education programs at Seattle’s Smart Building Center
Listen and Connect
If you have questions or feedback for the Reframe team, email reframe@pilotlight.ai. You can also follow the podcast through your preferred app to stay updated on future episodes.
Reframe is hosted by Jeff Nichols and presented by Pilotlight
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What is Reframe?
Reframe is the podcast about building sustainability.
Commercial and public buildings are among the biggest producers of carbon emissions. It’s a problem of massive scale. But, for building owners, engineers and contractors, solving it may actually be more of an opportunity than a challenge. That’s what the “Reframe” podcast is all about. Join host Jeff Nichols on an exploration of the forces driving sustainability in our built environment. And meet the people who are leading the charge.
Reframe Pod Ep6 - Kerry Meade - Transcript
Jeff: [00:00:16] I'm Jeff Nichols. Welcome to ReFrame, the show about building sustainability. Today's episode explores how the change in administrations is going to impact progress with the climate change fight. Will a change in rhetoric really change impact on the ground? Will a change in leadership completely undo progress that has already been made?
[00:00:38] My conversation today is with Kerry Mead, the executive director of Building Potential, based in Seattle, and we explore these important questions. Our conversation was recorded after the election, but before the new administration was sworn in, and holy smokes, is this conversation relevant after just the first week of our new administration?
[00:01:00] So with that, let's dive in. Kerry, welcome to the Reframe podcast.
[00:01:06] Kerry: Thanks.
[00:01:07] Jeff: Tell us a little bit about you. You're the executive director of Building Potential. What is that? What do you do?
[00:01:13] Kerry: Building potential is a nonprofit trade association, and we are closely partnered with another nonprofit charitable organization, the smart building center.
[00:01:23] We are the staff of both organizations. I am the executive director of both organizations, but they are two separate organizations.
[00:01:32] Jeff: So you've got an interesting role. You, you literally lead both the building potential and the smart buildings center, explain that to us.
[00:01:39] Kerry: Yeah, um, so two nonprofit organizations building potentials of 501c6 trade association.
[00:01:47] Uh, smart building center is a 501c3 charitable organization. Trade associations engage in things like advocacy. We lobby at the state legislatures in Washington and Oregon. We work to advance policies that we think will support economic opportunities and economic growth in our industry. And then we do other kind of educational work and networking work to promote, you know, engagement within the industry itself.
[00:02:10] The smart building center charitable organization side is focused exclusively on education and training and networking. So what we're looking to do there is grow the market opportunity, the accelerate the commercialization of smart buildings and smart buildings practices and technologies. Um, the two organizations work closely together.
[00:02:29] Obviously there's overlap between folks who want to engage in a trade association, kind of the service provider side, the members who are kind of working with buildings and trying to get projects done and managing the energy inside those buildings. And then the smart building center side, which kind of draws in also the building owner side of things, the building manager side of things, where they are thinking about.
[00:02:53] You know, how do I best manage my building? How do I maintain the value of this asset? How do I grow the asset value through new technologies? How do I deal with complying with different kinds of standards that are, that are cropping up the two work very closely together. And there's, you know, mutual benefit between seeing the education of the market.
[00:03:15] So in that way, we're able to partner the two organizations together to, um. You know, put programming out there that can support both service providers and building owners and managers.
[00:03:27] Jeff: That's awesome. I'm interested to dive into that, especially the building owner, right? These people that own the assets kind of explore some of that mindset just because I think, uh, you bring a really interesting perspective.
[00:03:40] And where, where we met was that the building potential Uh, member event right back in, in November, uh, the day after the election, I could, I could definitely see, um, some of that, let, let's unpack kind of what this means. And, and it, what's fascinating to me as I learn more about this industry, like it is very complex.
[00:04:00] There's a lot of players from, you know, from, there were cities there at the major utility players were there. You have designer architect. firms, you have kind of consultants on the periphery, you have the mechanical contractors. There's a lot of different stakeholders in the matrix, right? So let's touch on that and kind of policy because that's honestly, that's one of the questions I've probably gotten asked the most is, okay, what does a new administration mean for energy efficiency, trying to address climate change, the role that buildings play, like what are kind of your thoughts or what are you hearing or what's your perspective?
[00:04:38] Kerry: Yeah. Well, I think the Biden administration was really great for our industry. They put a lot, what, what the federal government can do is put a lot of funding into R and D for technologies to bring down the costs. So they're more, you know, feasible to be used building technologies. grid modernization technologies that enable kind of buildings to be used differently, but also just getting efficient equipment installed into people's homes.
[00:05:07] They put a lot of new programs out there, a lot of funding out there through the IRA and the. bipartisan infrastructure law. Um, some people call it IRA and bill. So, you know, that was fabulous. That's great. It was very exciting to see all of that happen. And as a result of it, there's been a lot of local work that's been done to pursue that funding.
[00:05:32] You know, the state. The Department of Commerce, the City of Seattle, our utilities have all secured funding to do grid modernization projects, to do energy code development work, to, you know, implement building performance standards, building emissions performance standards. To do a variety of things that are needed to scale up kind of energy efficiency and to scale up clean buildings and smart buildings and to modernize our grid and enable electrification, just all like electrify transportation, all those things.
[00:06:08] There's a lot of, um, kind of infrastructure development that's needed. So I think the big question that I hear everyone asking is, okay, so is this stuff going to go away? Will we keep these programs running so that we can continue to invest in the infrastructure that's needed to do this kind of work?
[00:06:27] And I don't know if anyone has a great crystal ball on that. I think what I've heard is. The, um, investments that's come that are coming in this stuff from the federal government are, um, they're going everywhere. They're not just going to. The blue quote unquote blue cities are the blue States. They're going to every where that needed it.
[00:06:54] They're building bridges. They're, you know, enabling more reliability of the grid so that people have fewer power outages during all these storms that are happening. Just a huge variety of projects are being funded and the support for those. Projects is pretty bipartisan. So I'm hopeful that that sort of local investment won't go away in the new administration.
[00:07:19] On the flip side, you know, I think that, and this isn't an area I have a ton of depth of knowledge in, but I think that there's also a lot of kind of discussion of tariffs and those. Sort of up the chain, kind of what the federal government can do to like, let's say, manipulate markets a little bit and how that could all play out.
[00:07:44] And the downstream impact of tariffs and supply chain cost increases, even with the funds still coming in for those infrastructure developments, if the supply chain gets really congested because price is just dramatically increased due to tariffs or. Certain products become unavailable to us because of they become price, you know, price prohibitive
[00:08:09] Jeff: pumps and yeah, yeah,
[00:08:11] Kerry: you know, you could see a lot of stalling of the work that's being done.
[00:08:15] I do think that the Biden administration also was really focused on having a lot of those funds happen here in the United States developed and manufactured, but I think a lot of work was meant to be occurring here. And so I'm sure there will be impacts to supply chains. I don't know, you know, if tariffs go into place, I don't know the extent that those impacts would have on the energy related investments that the federal government was funding under Biden administration that we hope will continue under the Trump administration.
[00:08:51] I think we can expect that regulatorily. I don't think that the Biden administration went really far in trying to push down regulations like. National building performance standard, which I'd love to see, to be honest, because I think, you know, not everyone gets to live in the wonderful Pacific Northwest, where we have really smart people designing things like that.
[00:09:12] So I'd love to see something like that happen. I didn't really see that moving forward very quickly under Biden. I wouldn't see it moving at all under a Trump administration. Um, similarly, I think there's going to be. Just based again on my own reading of what his administration is saying they are interested in.
[00:09:29] I think they're interested in the oil and gas development and, you know, maybe, I don't know if they would. Drill,
[00:09:37] Jeff: baby, drill. I don't know if they're trying to
[00:09:40] Kerry: manipulate the market there because, you know, I think there is safety in the sense that, uh, that is a global market and those prices, like what we decide to do here isn't the only influence on that market.
[00:09:55] And so I don't know how much we can kind of prop up resources that are becoming economically unsound, right? I think utilities are interested in clean resources for a reason. That's again, that's just me reading that. I do think any kind of like Utility regulation, admissions regulation, uh, that kind of stuff.
[00:10:17] I wouldn't expect that to be moving under Trump administration. Yeah, that's my basic, uh, thoughts on the national perspective and how it might change. Um, sure.
[00:10:31] Jeff: That's right. Leadership at the national level matters, but we still have a lot to learn, right? About the Trump administration, what they're going to do.
[00:10:38] So what are we? Zero in on kind of the local level and why that matters.
[00:10:43] Kerry: Electricity utilities are local. So our state governments here in Washington and Oregon, they're kind of. ahead of the national, you know, trends anyway, both states are leaders in this space and the resources are local. You know, how much things change at the national level and what that means for us here locally, where we already have a lot of headwind from our state legislatures kind of pushing us in a specific direction.
[00:11:12] I don't know that we need to worry as much here as you might if you were working in like, you know, a state that like Oklahoma or You know, for example, where there's maybe more oil opportunities that you'd like to see exploited.
[00:11:26] Jeff: Yeah, there were three things, as I, you know, recall the conversation in the room, that building potential member event.
[00:11:34] The first was what you just mentioned around. You know at the federal level, it's really important in terms of setting standards and bringing big dollars to the table I I I do think the inflation reduction act was very poorly named. They should have just called it the climate change You know funding act.
[00:11:51] I mean, there's so much money there to really You know combat and and set as you said that kind of that foundation but all of the action, especially in terms of building efficiency and how you know buildings contribute to climate like That all comes through the local level, right? So the state, the county, the city, and that PUD level probably matter most.
[00:12:14] And so I thought that was really interesting, especially for people that have been in this space for decades, right? They've seen a lot of administrations of all different types kind of come through. I thought that that was a really good perspective, right? That at the end of the day, local is probably what's going to matter most.
[00:12:32] But it doesn't mean at the federal level, you know, there's no impact. So that was my first takeaway the second is that as you mentioned there's actually new studies that have come out that Most of the benefit and funds that have come through the inflation reduction act have actually gone to red counties and cities and so I do think that people want to invest in their communities.
[00:12:56] And so that That kind of crosses both blue, red divide. And so I think you'll, you'll continue to see advocacy for that, uh, versus kind of wholesale, we're just going to do away, you know, the old is bad. We're going to cut everything and, you know, move on to this new thing. You know, one seven nine D has been around since 2005, the Bush administration, right.
00:13:16] And it's actually law. So, you know, it's hard to get laws passed. And once they're in place, an executive order doesn't automagically change that. They can change some of the requirements, you know, different departments, the IRS, the DOE, but the law is going to stay. The question is how watered down does it get or not?
[00:13:35] And then the final point I thought was, I love what the, I think it was city of Tacoma. Uh, one of the gentlemen there, he mentioned the importance of language. And how actually the election maybe is a really good reminder for those in this space that, that language matters and like, if we use the right language, like clean buildings, right, clean water, clean air, that's kind of like, that's a bipartisan thing.
[00:13:59] Like, it's hard to get people shaking their heads, like, no, we want dirty. Yeah. You know, breathe dirty air. It's like, no, we, we want the, you know, these things clean. It's really a matter of how do we go about doing it? And that's, that's, I think the last thing where I think building potential has a huge role in like shaping the conversation.
[00:14:17] Like how do we move this out of kind of the like techno speak, you know, decarbonization, like how do we just simplify this so that. You know, we can get more people on board towards just making it better. Any of that kind of resonate with you?
[00:14:31] Kerry: Yeah, no, all of it does. I think the Trump administration has expressed a lot of interest in tax relief.
[00:14:37] So one seven 90, no harm done there. Right? Like that's. It's just benefiting the building owners and the community at large. It seems like a, I feel like that's probably secure. The language piece is super interesting. I know locally, you know, we had a couple initiatives and I read an article, um, some folks at the university of Washington looking at the way language influenced the vote, you know, specifically on our.
[00:15:07] cap and trade program. The Climate Commitment Act. It's basically a carbon tax, right? That's how it basically works. It's a cap and trade program. We had a couple ballot initiatives over the last several years to try and pass that sort of carbon pricing scheme at the ballot, and they were rejected. And then the legislature stepped in past the Climate Commitment Act.
[00:15:30] We have this cap and trade program and this. state. There was an initiative that was trying to repeal the cap and trade program and it wasn't successful. And we voted down the repeal. So we voted against those ballot initiatives that had carbon pricing. But when the legislature went and passed This law, we had no say in that when it was offered to us at the ballot to turn it to reject it, we said, No, we want to keep it.
[00:15:56] And when they looked at the analysis of the language that was used in the campaign to fight against the repeal of the Climate Commitment Act. So the the no one 21 17 campaign, they didn't focus on the carbon pricing side of it. They focused on the benefit that the dollars were bringing to the state locally.
[00:16:16] So things like clean air, Like you were just saying things like, you know, local incentives for efficiency projects or electrification to, you know, things to help communities. And then other things like reforestation, planting trees, things people want to see happen. So they didn't talk about the fact that, you know, we were.
[00:16:37] Imposing a tax on oil, you know, distribution in the state or on utilities down the road or what, you know, a tax. It's not exactly a tax, but you know that it wasn't we weren't that we were pricing carbon as a bad thing. Instead, they focused on how much the revenue that's generated by that program is helping our state and and it was Shot down that 2117, uh, failed by substantial margins.
[00:17:04] Yeah. So yeah, I think language is really important And I remember that comment
[00:17:09] Jeff: Well, and yeah, that's why it stood out to me because I I thought I thought there was a lot of insight in that And certainly i've just found in sales simple wins And so the more we can just make it simple, I think we get people on board.
[00:17:25] So Kerry, I want to switch gears and get into the mind of, of building owners, right? These folks that own, um, the asset. And I had a conversation recently where, you know, one of the comments was, you know, energy tax incentives or efficiency, while, you know, saves them money, there's been, you know, a hard, tangible benefit there.
[00:17:44] It, it's not really, In the spreadsheet of the model like does that match some of the conversations you're having or you know, what? You take us inside the mindset of building owners as you have conversations with them.
[00:17:58] Kerry: That's an audience that we are frequently trying to bring into the conversation.
[00:18:03] They're hard to get to come to events. I think your question touches on some of the reasons why. I don't think Our space is something that they're thinking about when they're developing projects. We do talk to some building owners and we have a training program for building operators. So when it comes to building managers and folks who are in the buildings trying to operate them, we certainly have, you know, a lot of those folks in our audience.
[00:18:29] And on the Smart Building Center side, we have had developers, um, building owners. Involved there at the board level and attending some of our events, I've heard developers say I don't need to know about this stuff because it's my engineer's job to tell me about it. I don't care and it's not. In my scope of work to understand what's happening and, you know, what smart technologies are, why they benefit a project, my engineer can handle that.
[00:18:58] And then I've heard kind of the engineer service providers say, well, if the building owners aren't interested in it, it's not going to make it into the project. So there's sort of this like chicken and egg issue. There were people are kind of pointing at each other to your point, like after they develop a project, they're moving on to a new project.
[00:19:17] And so I don't know that they have a vested interest in seeing how that project performs after they step away. A lot of times they even sell it off. And so it's not even, they don't care. I have heard of other. Developer models, not in the United States, in Europe, where they're thinking about the life cycle a little bit more and the argument that I heard there had to do a little bit with the productivity in that industry and that there's been a declining level of productivity in the architecture, engineering and construction space for a long time, and they're looking to find ways to make more out of buildings.
[00:20:01] And one of the ways to do that is to actually hang on to the asset and try to find ways to commodify some of the services within the building so that you're seeing the performance itself become valuable on an annual basis. Maybe that's through operating contracts with. occupants. There's space there to really think innovatively about what our buildings need to do.
00:20:29] I do think this is an area where policy is driving some disruption.
[00:20:33] Jeff: That was the bottom line of my conversation with this project developer is that it's hard for just a dollars and cents argument to add up just on like energy tax incentives. It just, it's not significant enough compared to The benefit of managing a new project and it probably won't ever be so it's gonna have to be legislation And kind of the you know, if you think carrots and sticks, I mean carrots matter, but the stick Is really going to matter and so i'm curious to kind of hear your thoughts Obviously we have a wash and clean buildings, which is still in its rollout infancy But as you look out and especially look to advocate nationally, what do you see or what's of interest?
[00:21:18] Kerry: Yeah, let me see if I can form I have a lot of fun thoughts here, and I hope they can come across coherently. Um, so there's a lot of moving parts. The performance standards, I think, are really important. Um, they're driving at the energy use. Intensity, not just at how efficient is the equipment in your building, but how are you operating your building?
[00:21:44] Are you using the equipment correctly? Are you managing your annual usage in a way that's managing that asset efficiently? And that matters more and more as we move to a hundred percent clean electricity and we move to electrification. And the reason there is that. The load is growing. This is where I feel like there's a lot of moving parts.
00:22:10] Load growth means we either need to construct a whole bunch of new supply side resources, or we need to better manage the demand side and the load growth. In a way, that means we need fewer of those resources. And in reality, with what I'm seeing, projections of load growth, that means both, both of those things need to happen.
[00:22:34] And without doing both of those things, we will have reliability challenges. You know, add to that, our life is super dependent on electricity now. We use it, you know, I mean, in an even more electrified future, it will be even more the case, but our jobs are Largely online and computers. There's fewer in person meetings that don't involve some element of electronics.
[00:22:59] Our transportation is becoming electric. Our homes are becoming electric. Our businesses are becoming electric. And all of that is important because we can clean up electricity. And cleaning up electricity, empowering all of our lives with clean electricity, means we can have a really enormous impact on climate change.
[00:23:20] But it also means we really need to think about things totally differently than we have. And so From the building owner perspective, they're going to need to manage costs that are going to be increasing. We know they're going to increase. The utility costs are going to increase. They have to. And we're already seeing that.
[00:23:39] We also have this really erratic weather that's putting more pressure on a grid that's highly centralized. And so we're going to need to start thinking about how do we manage costs for building and homeowners while continuing and accelerating the pace of electrification in the face of rising market prices for wholesale power and rising consumer rates and more erratic, crazy storms, more like unpredictable demand at different times of the year.
[00:24:13] That's not, that's historically totally abnormal. And I think That starts to really hit the building owner, so they have requirements to hit EUI targets while things are electrifying a commercial building owner might not have the same experience of the rate increases, but as tenants are now holding the upper hand in terms of at least office space, right?
00:24:37] There's a lot of vacancy. Tenants are going to be looking for buildings where they're able to manage their Energy usage differently on site, um, to help with the rate increases that make that. More or less affordable to put your, you know, business in that location. So, I see all of these factors as really disrupting that commercial building project development and commercial building management industry, the way it's been historically.
[00:25:07] There's just too much shifting for it to not. And then I also see this huge opportunity for disruption. Of that entire interaction as it gets increasingly more complicated and you have more electrical loads to manage and you're trying to figure out a lot of really complicated pieces of signals from a utility around.
[00:25:31] Uh, time of use rates, which are going to be rolled out and different prices at different times of day and different reliability issues. You add in like performance standards themselves. I just think there's a huge opportunity for the private sector to get involved in. Helping to, you know, they're already involved in helping to manage the energy of buildings, but to have that be even more sophisticated to get involved in the funding and installation, the investment in the commercial building infrastructure that the utility wants to see done.
[00:26:10] I think there's a lot of. questions out there around who will own that equipment, maybe even like a potential argument or a conflict, you know, between utilities and private sector ownership of resources that utilities want to manage. Cause I think that utilities know that they're going to need customer cited resources to manage this future.
[00:26:35] And then also, you know, utilities are regulated and That's makes them uniquely responsible for reliability and really more concerned for it. They have regulators who make sure that that is something that is top of mind for them. And I don't know that the private sector has that same, they have different.
[00:26:57] Incentives. So yeah, there's like a lot happening on that one question.
[00:27:02] Jeff: There's disruption that's happening and there's still so much and if you just break down the 30 percent of all energy to buildings is wasted. In the past, building owners don't really care because the tenants pay for that, but I think tenants are increasingly going to care.
[00:27:19] And, you know, it's interesting in any change from my, you know, experience consulting is that you're going to see people address all types. You'll have the do it yourselfers that, you know, are going to figure it out and, and just navigate all this. Then you have kind of this mass middle where, like, they will take action, but it has to be really simple or easy for them.
[00:27:40] And then you have the people that, you know, like, they just will do nothing, you know, no matter what, you know, they'll pay fines, they'll do. You know as little as possible and kind of, you know, fight. So that's where I think, you know What is the tipping point, you know energy as a service I think is a fascinating concept.
[00:27:56] You don't see a lot In in the real world, you know kind of today um, okay, I want to get to Buildings but also like starting to look at the future a little bit So I went back, I've kind of written this like operating thesis and like some of the stats that I find really interesting, uh, and why I think buildings, especially when it comes to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, like this, like this has to be a part of the solution for how we navigate over the next 30 years.
[00:28:27] So according to the Department of Energy, 76 percent of all Electricity use goes to buildings. So three quarters. I mean, uh, that's pretty staggering. And if you just look at like, how many buildings do we have in the U. S. As of 2018, we don't have more updated data, at least that I could find. There are 5. 9 million buildings in the U.
[00:28:46] S., 96 billion square, uh, foot, right, of commercial real estate. And what I find is fascinating is 80 percent of the buildings that will exist in 2050. They already exist. They're standing. They've been built and 75 percent of all buildings as of that time will have been built pre 2000. So we're going to have to deal with the buildings that have already been built and are standing.
[00:29:15] So how do you think about that? You know, whether it's smart buildings or building potential. What are the conversation that you guys are having around that? And some of the solutions are way forward.
[00:29:26] Kerry: Yeah. I mean, I think that's always been the area that we've been particularly interested in. It's much easier to build a new building smartly, or maybe it's not easier.
[00:29:37] Maybe that's not the right word, but we felt like the code can handle that. The energy code can tell folks how to build those buildings, but the existing buildings, they're really hard to make more efficient. They can be really hard and costly to make more efficient. It's really hard to take out the whole gas boiler system.
[00:29:57] And, you know, it's expensive. It's hard to make the argument, but then also, you know, how feasible technically is it? Of course, I've also heard people say anything can be done with enough money. It's always been our, our area of interest. The existing buildings. I think the Pacific Northwest has had a really, we've been really fortunate here in Washington state to have a fantastic ESCO program.
[00:30:22] What is
[00:30:23] Jeff: ESCO? Yeah. Cause I think the average person, again, the terminology, they don't know what that means. ESCOs
[00:30:28] Kerry: are energy service companies. So it's an acronym. Um, and they are kind of. Building energy management service providers. They might have construction wings. They might be involved in new construction, but they are very focused on existing buildings going in doing deep, you know, investment grade audits, figuring out what kinds of things need to be done to the building to improve its efficiency and designing projects to do that work.
[00:30:58] What I was kind of alluding to earlier is that here we have a great public building energy savings performance contracting program. It's like a national leader for how to do those programs really well. And that's a contracting framework that our ESCOs can use to fund projects in public buildings to make them more efficient.
[00:31:17] So they've done a ton of really awesome work. It's like, You know, just under 2 billion worth of contracts that have been executed, I think, since like 2008 here in Washington. Oregon is trying to work on making their program more robust. Private commercial buildings, they're able to use that contracting framework without the authority of the state.
[00:31:36] So the program is specific to public buildings, but private buildings can use it as well. Not the program, but the contracting framework. So the ESCOs, they're the ones who are kind of engineering those existing buildings. You know, they're figuring out how to make them as efficient as possible. And they have also been the leaders in bringing like.
[00:31:57] other new concepts online. So really thinking about the relationships between not just like each individual building system and how efficient it is, but how those systems relate to one another, how you connect them to the, to the cloud and collect data to, you know, leverage AI and other things to improve the operations they've.
[00:32:17] Really elevated the importance of the role that the human beings who are running those buildings play in kind of the success of the building's operations. So supporting building operators in training and education to help them really learn to manage those buildings efficiently, while also maintaining occupant comfort.
[00:32:39] And we have had, uh. Interesting market up here when you look at it just from an energy efficiency perspective, where our Esco market has been pretty robust. And so I think we are starting off in this new era of thinking about the performance of buildings at the meter and how that whole building is performing, which is what Esco's have been thinking about.
[00:33:03] forever. We're starting off with like a leg up because we have some of the best and brightest to have been doing this for, you know, two decades here versus other places where maybe there was more of a focus on the individual pieces of equipment inside the buildings instead of that whole building.
[00:33:21] meter based approach to managing the energy and the way everything interacts inside.
[00:33:27] Jeff: So Kerry, let's ground this like in a real example. Is there a building owner that you maybe engage with that they were hesitant at first around just the whole topic of efficiency or, you know, how to run their buildings better and, and, you know, How did they make that leap and get over some of these complexity hurdles?
[00:33:47] Kerry: Yeah, well, so I think in my role, I don't have a lot of those direct conversations around convincing someone to do the project. But I have had conversations with folks who have explained why they chose to invest. I think, you know, one example that always comes to mind for me is the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Institute, I think is the name of it.
[00:34:09] But it's this big complex, this big campus of research and medical clinics in Seattle. It's one of the most efficient buildings in the state, probably. It may be one of the most efficient of its kind in the nation. I, I recall that their, their data center was particularly efficient. They have put their kind of campus.
[00:34:34] I can't recall exactly what his name was. His job is to make sure that everyone has all the energy that they need, that all of their systems are functioning, that patients are getting the care they need, that things are staying super cold in the research space, where you have samples and things. He needed to make sure things were reliable and meeting the needs of the folks who were using those buildings.
[00:34:56] But he also put energy efficiency as like critical kind of front lead piece of managing that whole campus. And his thinking was every single dollar that they save on their energy bill through efficiency was a dollar that was put towards saving people's lives. From their cancer research and that stayed with me.
[00:35:18] So that's a case where the complex of buildings has a real mission associated with it. And their operators thinking about those costs and even if they seem like nickels and dimes to a project developer. At the end of the day, every single nickel and dime that's not spent on paying the electricity bill or paying for energy that wasn't needed is being put towards saving people's lives.
[00:35:40] So that's where the mission. Plays a, a key role.
[00:35:45] Jeff: Uh, the Fred Hutch example really hits home. My, my dad is battling prostate cancer, and so I had to take him to an appointment there, to the, the new facility. And you feel it. As a patient or caregiver as you go in, it's the only medical facility I've been to where they've thought through the whole experience of like when people come, they have, um, it's like a concierge, but it's not fancy or whatever.
[00:36:16] It applies to everyone. You drive up and they like take the car for you. They go park it. They have a wheelchair there. It just. It, it, it sounds small, but that, that the mission driving the experience and we are going to save money, that efficiency, it applied to the whole experience, I would say. And there's something incredibly comforting in that where you're like, this is really well run.
[00:36:41] The, the care that I'm going to get is going to be equally as good. So I, I think that's really interesting if you really put, you know, your tenants, their customer experience within these buildings. It's not just saving dollars or it's like a line item, but like if you can go deeper on the end person that you want to impact, I think that these projects, like.
00:37:03] It's not a penciling out conversation. It is just a no brainer. So anyways, your, your example really hit home for me.
[00:37:11] Kerry: Yeah, they have such an interesting, complex set of needs on that campus and really hard to manage. It's not homogenous. There's like deep cooling needs. heating me. It's like that are just really set apart from one another.
[00:37:29] And they have like a command center. It's kind of interesting, like the brain of the campus where they're monitoring everything in real time. So it's really smart. And it's not what you think about when you think of what is a smart building. A lot of people think of technology. That's like I walk in and the building says, hi, Kerry.
[00:37:48] And it, you know, sends a message to my phone that gives me a map of where it might do those things, that technology, but it's also about taking your building where it is, all of its complex needs, managing the different technology, the user experience of the building, like you were saying, what is the program of the building, what are the people that are coming to do and how can we manage the operations in a way that makes it a really comfortable and seamless experience.
[00:38:16] Uh, they, you know, comfort from the, from the mechanics of it, the quality of the air, the, um, warmth in the room, as well as the, um, kind of more personal side of it. Like, this is a place where people are coming for really personal, intimate reasons. So I think that that mission piece is. is key. Money still mattered.
[00:38:39] It just was that they also prioritized sustainability and efficiency and felt that that was critical to their business as well.
[00:38:46] Jeff: Let's talk a little bit about, uh, the national level. What are you advocating for and how does that work?
[00:38:55] Kerry: There's a couple different things that I do. So I do speak with other trade associations in other states and jurisdictions.
[
00:39:02] We're kind of tracking what's happening in their space and how it, you know, compares with ours. A lot of that is for innovative purposes. We want to understand the trends nationally, but there's benefit in hearing from others as they go through things or even just warnings like, Oh, there's going to be really intense.
[00:39:22] Cyber security contracts coming down from the utilities because of this, like, hacking incident or California just started to implement this much more robust requirement and so I can learn from that and just learn, okay, what can we anticipate and then also we can share ideas. So that's one way that we engage nationally.
[00:39:44] We do also participate in like an energy efficiency group that has some folks in Washington, DC, who share kind of educational materials with Congress. They share letters of support for things like maintaining the one seven nine D. Um, and it's like a collection of nonprofits. Who all connect with this, uh, government affairs group who keeps tabs on things.
[00:40:08] And it's more of like educational, none of us really engage in national lobbying because it just has a lot of tax impacts from national lobbying that we would need to think through with our, um, nonprofit designation. Um, so to be careful, we just don't do it. But the other way that the smart building center engages nationally.
[00:40:30] Not exactly advocacy, but training our building operator certification program. We partner with other groups throughout the country. They license our curriculum and implement it locally. And so we maintain a connection with all these other organizations throughout the nation who are running our BOC program in their territory.
[00:40:52] Jeff: It's interesting to me with IOT and all of all of the systems that we have in buildings, they're all connected, they're all smart, but it's almost like our processes, the education, they're not being run smartly. So it's, it's almost like it's, it's not, do we have the tech? We have it. It's are we applying the technology to really drive the outcomes and benefits that people want.
[00:41:16] So I wish change happened more quickly, but as I've learned over whatever, 30 plus years, it takes time to kind of figure this out. Well, Kerry, thank you so much for your time and joining the ReFramed podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation.
[00:41:34] Kerry: Same here. This has been super fun. And, uh, I really enjoyed the conversation as well.
[00:41:39] There's a lot to talk about.
[00:41:44] Jeff: There are three takeaways from my conversation with Kerry. The first is that we need to separate rhetoric. And certainly the rhetoric with the new administration has already changed. Words matter. Drill, baby, drill matters. But the reality is that the benefits from many of the programs that have happened at the federal level benefit communities that are both red and blue.
[00:42:12] And so there are a lot of invested people that want to see the the funds and the progress that has already been made. They want to see that continue. And that's something that, again, bridges the partisan divide. The second takeaway is that I think this election is really a wake up call. That if we want to see more change happen, we have to broaden that movement.
[00:42:38] And that really is going to happen Only if we really simplify our language and so we need to be talking more in terms of, you know, clean air, clean water versus decarbonization. If we want to bring more people in because everybody can get on board with those kinds of objectives. And then my final takeaway is that, you know, action now and leadership is likely going to shift more to the local level.
[00:43:03] And so while federal initiatives provide funding and certainly standards that help make things happen more quickly, ultimately, all the change that has happened and will continue to happen happens at a local level. And so that is only going to increase in importance as we move through these next four years.
[00:43:23] For those that care about climate change and its impacts, the results of this last election may feel disheartening, but my perspective after the conversation with Kerry has changed. The reframe is that real progress has happened at the federal level, and it has. kick started a lot of work that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
[00:43:44] And so the Inflation Reduction Act and some of these other large bills have had a traumatic impact. Federal law that cannot just be changed by an executive order. Leadership at the state, county, city, and PUD level is only going to increase in its importance to making progress over the next four years.
[00:44:05] And that's where we need to focus with that. Thanks for joining my conversation with Kerry and until the next time.
[00:44:13] Announcer: You've been listening to reframe the show about building sustainability presented by pilot light opinions shared by the reframe guests. Aren't necessarily the views of their companies.
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