by aleida, on April 28th, 2010
Image courtesy of BrightTALK webinar
The BrightTALK programming continued with Randy Knox’s presentation titled Adobe – LEED & Beyond. Knox is the Head of Environmental Programs at Adobe, and oversees their global real estate facilities and physical security operations. His was a very short presentation – it lasted only 28 minutes – but it was nevertheless a very informative look at Adobe’s internal sustainability initiatives.
In the United States, Adobe has already earned four LEED-EB Platinum certifications: three for their headquarters in San Jose, CA, and one for their offices in San Francisco, CA, which also happens to be the oldest building in the world with that level of certification. The shift at headquarters began during the energy crisis of 2001 with a concerted effort to reduce their electrical use. With just a few small and simple projects (like turning off lights and de-lamping certain areas of their building), they reduced their use by about 10%. This compelled them to commit to an additional 10% reduction, and installed real-time electrical meters to measure their progress.
Meters in place, they replaced incandescent bulbs with CFLs in some areas, installed watt stopper power strips in all of their 2,500 employee offices (which also allowed them to run other electrical devices via motion sensors), reduced the run time of their garage fans (without endangering human safety), and reduced the length of time that their outside lights were on at night. The projects cost $118,000 to implement. They received $79,000 in rebates from PG&E, their local utility, for a total out-of-pocket expense of $39,000. Knox reports that they are currently saving about $212,000 per year thanks to these changes.
But they didn’t stop there. Continuing with lighting, they replaced all of their garage high-pressure sodium lamps with CFLs. Currently, they are experimenting with LEDs, which are already installed in elevator lobbies and exit signage. They are working on transitioning their garages’ first floor to LEDs. So far, they have spent $400,000 on these lighting efforts, have received $70,000 in rebates from PG&E, and are saving $306,215 per year.
Moving beyond energy, they installed motion sensors on all sinks, toilets, soap dispensers, and towel dispensers, as well as waterless urinals in all the men’s rooms. These changes reduced their domestic water use by 22%. Outdoors, they used drought resistant plants watered through a drip irrigation system, and installed a system of evapo-transpirational controllers. The changes reduced their irrigation water use by 76%.
In operations, Knox’s favorite project is the aforementioned retrofit of their garage fans. The fans were running 24/7, but an air quality expert concluded that “we only needed to run our garage fans for 15 minutes an hour during the three hours of the morning commute, and 15 minutes an hour during the three hours of the evening commute, and our air quality would still be four times what OSHA said it needed to be,” explains Knox. At a cost of a mere $200, they reprogrammed the fans to meet those new requirements, and Adobe is reaping a whopping $98,818 in savings per year. Just in case, they also installed carbon monoxide sensors by the fans that will automatically turn them on in case air quality ever does approach hazardous levels.
Knox reviewed many other strategies, though still just a sampling of everything that Adobe has done. Hear him speak about the company’s impressive efforts here.
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