The Environment+Energy Leader 100 is an annual list that recognizes the environment and energy “doers” who break trail in creating new solutions, programs, platforms, best practices and products to help their companies – or other companies – achieve greater success in commercial and industrial environment and energy management. Meet the 100… is an ongoing series that will feature one E+E 100 Honoree from 2022 each week. See the complete list of 2022 Honorees here.
Meet Christopher Wei, VP of Engineering with Verdani Partners. Christopher oversees Verdani Partners’ Technical Services department, where he works with his team to build strong and impactful ESG programs for over 1 billion square feet of commercial real estate across the globe. "While each day brings new and unique challenges, my daily activities typically involve collecting and analyzing data to identify opportunities to reduce the environmental impact of our clients’ real estate portfolios," he says. "I work directly with our clients to strategize and plan for activities that will meet each client’s unique ESG goals and targets." When Christopher is not working on portfolio-wide initiatives, he can be found doing a lot of work at the individual building level. "This may involve everything from doing on-site testing of indoor air quality levels to conducting an energy audit that will help a building achieve LEED certification," he adds.
What do you see as today's biggest energy management challenges?
Christopher Wei: I believe there are still many challenges and areas of improvement related to measuring complete and accurate energy data for commercial buildings. A phrase you often hear is “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” so in order to effectively manage our energy, we must first start with having complete and reliable data from which we can create actionable strategies. Over the past several years, we have seen a significant rise in energy disclosure laws that have led to more utility providers developing tools to provide customers with this type of data. However, the process of obtaining this information can be complex, and most utility providers do not have the infrastructure in place to provide this level of information. While some vendors have also developed metering solutions to help tackle this issue, these solutions are still relatively new and remain costly for most building owners (although I have seen significant improvements over the past few years, so I am hopeful that costs will keep going down!).
With aggressive net-zero targets to meet to stem the rise of global temperatures, we must improve our methods of obtaining accurate data. Our team at Verdani has been fortunate to work with nearly every utility provider in the country, and we have been using that knowledge and experience to help more states and cities develop tools to allow more building owners obtain and understand their buildings’ energy data. A few years ago, our team worked directly with the state of California to develop and roll out its statewide benchmarking program, which allowed commercial building owners the ability to obtain whole-building energy data. More recently, our team has been working with different cities across the country on developing their own data aggregation tools and benchmarking programs.
What was a successful project or implementation you worked on at your company that you can share? Do you have any tips that would help colleagues at other companies who are contemplating similar projects?
CW: In early 2020, one of our clients had set a goal to achieve more ENERGY STAR certifications across their portfolio. The ENERGY STAR application requires on-site environmental assessments to be conducted, and with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, achieving this goal presented a huge challenge as pandemic conditions prevented us from traveling to the buildings’ locations. However, knowing that our client had regional landscaping teams that conduct quarterly on-site irrigation audits, our team came up with the idea to train these teams to conduct the environmental quality assessments. We developed a training guide and video, helped our client develop a software tool to record air quality levels, and generated reports for further analysis.
This program was successfully deployed across our client’s portfolio nationwide, resulting in over 230 buildings receiving an indoor air quality assessment and 100% of all eligible buildings receiving an ENERGY STAR certification. Not only did training the regional staff significantly reduce the amount of travel required, but these assessments can now be conducted regularly by the staff to ensure healthy indoor air quality levels on an ongoing basis.
For those who are contemplating similar types of large-scale projects that involve some creativity, my tip would be to try to occasionally take a step away from your day-to-day activities to focus on big-picture challenges and start brainstorming solutions. You will be surprised with what you come up with by simply focusing on solving one big problem at a time.
What trends do you expect to see in the market in the next few years? What challenges will the industry face and what technologies or organizational changes will overcome them?
CW: Over the past few years, not only have we seen more cities developing energy disclosure mandates, but cities have also started enforcing mandates that require buildings to meet certain carbon emissions targets. I expect this trend to continue across the country, and the level of scrutiny on what building owners disclose will continue to increase as well. However, to successfully implement these programs, the biggest challenge -- again – is the process of obtaining the data.
As mentioned, the process may be complex and often requires building owners to obtain signed authorization letters from their tenants or provide to their utility providers a list of all existing meter numbers at their building. While this may be a simple process for a small building, it can be a huge challenge when there are several hundred tenants in a building who directly pay for their own utilities.
To overcome these challenges, the technologies for and ease of access to obtaining whole building energy data will need to improve. From the trends I’ve observed over the past few years, I am optimistic that this will happen. Our team at Verdani is currently piloting a project that combines minimally invasive hardware solutions and AI technology to help more buildings easily obtain real-time whole-building energy data.
Tell us about a favorite hobby, passion or book you've read recently that has had an impact on you and your work.
CW: Hands down, the book that had the most impact on my work was “Essentialism: the disciplined pursuit of less,” by Greg McKeown. We live in such a busy and distracting world these days, often filled with Zoom meetings, non-stop Microsoft Teams messages, and massive backlogs of emails. This book taught me how to stay focused and productive in such a distracting world and also encouraged me to set aside occasional time to think and innovate.
With climate change being such a critical – and often overwhelming – global issue, it is important for us to occasionally escape from our day-to-day environment to think and innovate if we are going to save this planet. One of the chapters discusses how Bill Gates regularly took “think weeks,” where he escaped from his daily duties at Microsoft to simply think and read. I was inspired and did my own “think week” in August last year; I spent a week by the Columbia Gorge reading, thinking, and brainstorming solutions to big-picture problems. It was such a rewarding experience and I highly recommend that every industry leader try it!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cwei510/
Editor’s note: nominations are now open for this year’s E+E 100. Nominate a colleague — or yourself — for the 2022 E+E 100 today.
