Decisions made early in the building design process can have dramatic impacts on the building’s energy performance.  Is the building oriented to take full advantage of solar rays to maximize daylight while reducing unwanted solar heat gain? Will those more expensive double-glazed windows pay off?  As Joseph Romm famously said of building design, by the time “1% of the project’s up-front costs are spent, up to 70% of its life-cycle costs may already be committed.” In other words, a building’s design team, which only plays a role in the early phases of a building’s lifecycle, has significant control over the building’s long-term performance.

In the nearly 12 years that the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED green building certification has been administered, energy efficient design has been highly dependent on specialized designers that are able to integrate design software, such as Autodesk’s Building Information Modeling (BIM) suite, with energy modeling tools, such as the U.S. Department of Energy’s eQUEST tool.  To date, the process has been largely one-directional: a design team submits its completed design to a team of energy engineers, who redraw the blueprints in eQUEST and model energy performance.  By the time the design is submitted to the engineering team, however, most of the key decisions have been made, and little can be done to tweak the design to improve energy efficiency.  I recall from my days as a LEED and energy efficiency design consultant the frustration of being engaged in the design process too late to drive true energy efficient design.

So Long Redrawing

Now, however, building design and building performance is becoming a two-way street with Autodesk’s Revit 2014 software release.  This latest version now encompasses building performance analysis (BPA) features, which help design teams iterate between building design scenarios and their implications on energy performance.  Such capability not only allows design teams to make better-informed decisions about energy efficiency in the early stages of the design process, but it also reduces considerable labor costs on the back end because it allows design teams to export the digital blueprints to energy modeling environments such as eQUEST without redrawing, which can be a time-consuming process.

Jonathan Rowe, Sustainable Buildings Program Manager at Autodesk, sees this as a major step forward for the building industry as a whole. “One major pain point design teams face is getting rapid feedback on the energy performance of their planning decisions early in the process,” he told me when I spoke with him recently. “Energy Analysis for Autodesk Revit 2014 is a cloud-based solution that aims to provide this kind of actionable feedback in minutes rather than hours, making sustainability assessment a routine part of any project delivery.”

Given that Autodesk’s energy efficiency software is used to design many of today’s high-performance buildings, this level of interoperability will help facilitate the design of more efficient buildings and integrate energy efficiency into building design – from the outset.

BuildingIQ, a vendor of building energy management systems (BEMS) based in San Mateo, California, recently announced a $9 million round of venture financing.  The round was backed by Aster Capital (which is supported by Schneider Electric, Alstom, and Solvay), Siemens Financial Services’ Venture Capital unit, and Paladin Capital.

This financing round will help BuildingIQ scale up its North American marketing and operations efforts as well as invest more deeply in R&D.  BuildingIQ’s product line, which includes four key applications today focusing on building energy optimization, occupant comfort, demand response, and enterprise energy management, is one of the few offerings that not only identifies potential energy and operational improvements but also automatically makes changes to a building’s building management system (BMS) to execute those improvements.

But what’s most notable about this round of funding is the lineup of industry-leading firms that contributed to it.  Companies like Schneider Electric (vendor of the StruxureWare energy and operations management platform) and Siemens (which sells DESIGO automation control software) are already deeply engaged in the energy management market.  However, as I’ve discussed in previous blogs, companies in the smart building industry that would traditionally be in competition with each other are now forming partnerships and collaborating to bring offerings to market.  Often called “co-opetition,” this trend serves as a sign that the demands of smart building technology exceed the capabilities of any single firm, and value is best delivered when individual firms focus on core strengths rather than compete on the sheer breadth of their solution.

Co-Op to Stand Out

This is not the first time that BuildingIQ has engaged in co-opetition.  In March of last year, it announced a strategic alliance with Schneider Electric at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco.  In November, it announced that it would be offering its predictive energy optimization capability as part of Johnson Controls’ energy management platform, Panoptix.  Johnson Controls is also engaging other software vendors, such as EnergyPoints Analytics, on the Panoptix platform.  It’s also notable that this funding round represents the first time that Schneider Electric and Siemens have co-invested in a venture.

When I spoke last week with Mike Zimmermann, the CEO of Building IQ, he discussed the importance of co-opetition to success in the increasingly competitive building energy management market.  “Given the number of offerings in the market, you have to stand out, both in terms of your solution, and how you work with the large industry players in the market,” he said.  “It was important for us to find the right kind of capital to support our growth, with investors that will not only help us scale up, but also provide complementary offerings as we improve and differentiate BuildingIQ’s platform.”

In our recent report, “Building Energy Management Technology Landscape,” we argue that companies will do best in this market when their market-leading offerings are supported by those of other firms.  So you can expect to see more collaborative efforts like this in the future.

Although there are many clearinghouses for consumers to learn more about energy efficiency measures and how to incorporate cleantech in the building space, consumers still face a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to executing on a decision to introduce cleantech into their homes.  Free tools on the Internet involve a great deal of assumptions regarding energy and the money savings resulting from home energy efficiency measures, such as changing appliances, introducing better insulation, or installing distributed wind or solar.

In the absence of using a LEED qualified architect to reduce the energy footprint of a home, services like Climafy appeal to “do-it-yourself” types who prefer to go at it alone (or on a budget).  Normally, these homeowners would be able to rely on the expertise of a local hardware store, but since the return on investment for many building efficiency measures depends on the quality of the building (age, construction type), without knowing exactly the quality of the building, it’s difficult to make meaningful recommendations.

Three things make the Climafy service unique. First, it takes into account the quality of the building stock in an area by using data from public records to determine the age of properties.  Second, it helps a user determine with a much higher degree of precision how long it will take for clean technologies and building efficiency measures to pay for themselves.  Users can easily select more or fewer upgrades based on personal preference and the service includes information on available incentives.  Finally, Climafy matches users with vendors and installers by letting homeowners submit RFPs to qualified contractors.  Climafy’s revenue will come from the businesses who participate in the service.

Climafy and other services (such as One Block Off the Grid) give consumers more information on clean technologies and connect consumers with reputable and skilled installers.  By reducing the amount of imperfect information in the marketplace, these types of services will accelerate the transition from supply-driven cleantech to demand-driven cleantech.  Climafy is still refining its prototype product, but the premise is sound and users can experiment with the site and service options as the startup develops its service.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has spent 2 years and $16 million to transform a 1.5 mile stretch of road near the city’s Pilsen neighborhood to demonstrate how technologies (nearly all sourced from within a 500-mile radius of the city) and progressive planning can transform an urban environment.  The third most populous city in the United States, with sweltering summers and brutal winters, Chicago makes a good testing ground.

The approach taken in the Pilsen neighborhood, also known as the Cermak/Blue Island Sustainable Street Scape, mixes technology, planning, and integrating biodiversity to upgrade the thoroughfare.  Some of the technology integrated into the project seems like the stuff of the future, like photocatalytic cement that actually cleans the air as vehicles drive over the pavement.  Other technologies, such as solid-state street lighting, are more accessible.  In other cases, the city decided on more practical street designs that emphasized pedestrian safety and encouraged bikers to use the road.  The city also introduced dozens of native plant species to the street.

The Pilsen project is not the only project Chicago has undertaken.  In an effort to reverse the effect of heat sinks in the city, Chicago has undertaken several projects to make the city more livable by renovating public spaces as a part of the U.S. EPA’s Heat Island Reduction Program.   There are several different projects that fall into this category.  One is the city’s Green Alley Program.  According to the city, Chicago is home to 1,900 miles of public alleyways, more than any other city in the world, and these represent 3,500 acres of impermeable surfaces.  Imagine five Midway airports, shuttling runoff into a city’s overtaxed water and sewage system.  About 20% of these alleyways need repairs, but nearly all of them are contributing to the city’s stormwater management problem.  The program used permeable pavements, recycled materials, reflective pavements, and other improvements to improve the alleyways’ resilience in inclement weather.

The benefits don’t necessarily stop at the end of the road, so to speak.  When cities invest in public spaces, they are improving an open access resource.  Cleaner air will affect surrounding neighborhoods.  Permeable pavements will help keep dirty stormwater away from downstream fisheries and will alleviate pressure on the city’s water system.  Less light pollution (and clearer lighting in the streets and alleyways) will improve public safety.  Creating a habitat for biodiversity will impact air quality and ecosystem services like pollination.

Even more important for the market, the Cermak/Blue Island Sustainable Street Scape and Green Alleys program should give other cities ideas for which technologies and solutions they could consider for their own jurisdictions.