U.S. Bank has been on a solid energy fitness program, to the tune of tangible annual emissions reductions.
The energy health has come from diet-programmable thermostats and light sensors; and exercise-such as a utilization-hiking virtualization project that's swapped out servers at a 15:1 clip over the past 18 months. But these are relatively easy measures, and it will get harder to shed bloat. The bank's taking a more aggressive posture, including Energy Star participation, dashboard analysis and possible site audits as a means to prioritize future projects.
"As we go down this path, the opportunities will become more complicated," says Larry Morgan, director of corporate real estate operations for the U.S.'s fifth largest bank. "Considerable effort has to occur beyond that."
Lisa O'Brien, director of environmental affairs at U.S. Bank, says the bank's commissioned its first energy audit for a data center in Minneapolis. Energy experts will visit that site to evaluate consumption for systems and recommend upgrades. Based on its usefulness, the bank may do more audits.
U.S. Bank also last year selected software by Hara, San Mateo, Calif., to track and analyze energy usage. Hara will provide dashboard views or site-specific analysis of possible opportunities for savings, or show the cost and payback for potential projects across the bank's entire property portfolio.
And the institution was recently named an Energy Star Partner by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The designation means that U.S. Bank has committed to investing in energy efficiency and become an ambassador of the program, which allows buildings to earn annual Energy Star designations if their energy performance ranks in the top 25 percent of their peer category.
By the end of 2010, the bank had finished loading its raw data into the Energy Star portfolio manager program, which tracks energy usage for buildings according to their square footage, number of employees and workstations, and other attributes, and then benchmarks those buildings compared to like properties. Banks in general are starting to look to more advanced energy tracking software, after using Energy Star, as the most efficient place to invest for their energy savings programs, said Josh Lehman, energy and sustainability managers for EBI Consulting, Burlington, Mass.
U.S. Bank, which formed an energy committee in 2008, has already implemented most of the "blanket" energy upgrades-those that can apply to nearly any building-across about 1,000 of its facilities, Morgan said. For the entire 1,700-property portfolio, it began tracking energy use in 2010. So far, the bank has achieved carbon emission savings and energy reductions of 5 percent in 2008, and as much as 4 percent in 2009 and 2010.
The bank has targeted projects that pay for themselves in three years or less, but probably will have to extend the targeted payoff period when the 2011 planned projects are completed and the easier energy savings ideas have been exhausted, Morgan says.
