Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment would like your help:

We’re embarking on an ambitious effort to build Seattle’s resilience and we need your help. 

We’re creating a strategy that will help Seattle continue to thrive amidst ongoing urban challenges as well as prepare for sudden shocks and catastrophic events. 

We have some pretty good ideas of where we need to focus our efforts, but need to validate this info with you, our residents and community leaders. To that end, we’ve developed a short survey that will help us focus our efforts on the most critical areas as identified by our community members. I have two requests:

1) Please take the survey. It should take less than 10 mins of your time. 

2) Please distribute the survey to your peers, partners, and networks. Newsletters, social media, emails – whatever way works the best for you. It’s important to us that we hear from as many people as possible to ensure we are building our resilience strategy on the issues you care most about. So PLEASE spend just a few minutes responding to the survey and sharing it with your networks. 

Thank you so much for all you do.

 

 Easy Best Practices

Maintaining a lighting system can be labor intensive, especially when it comes to spot re-lamping of failed fluorescent lamps. To help improve your next maintenance cycle, keep these best practices from the Northwest Lighting Network in mind so you can save energy and extend operational hours.  Download the full pdf here: LowWatt T8 Best Practices One-Pager

Seattle Building Tune-Ups is a progressive energy efficiency policy that helps building owners identify smart, responsible ways to reduce energy and water costs. Like cars and bikes, all buildings need to be tuned regularly to keep them running as efficiently as possible. Through Tune-Ups, building owners find operational efficiencies and low- and no-cost fixes that improve building performance and on average reduce building energy use 10- 15%.

Building Tune-Ups are required every five years for buildings with 50,000 square feet or more of non-residential space (excluding parking). All work associated with a Building Tune-Up must be done by a qualified Tune-Up Specialist, experienced professionals who are responsible for conducting the building assessment, identifying required Tune-Up actions, performing those actions, verifying the work is done correctly, and submitting a report to the City.

As a certified Level II Building Operator (BOC), you’re well on your way to qualifying as a Tune-Up Specialist. Tune-Up Specialists must have least seven years of experience, including educational and/or professional experience, with commercial building operations and/or building energy management AND have one of the following certifications:

• Professional Engineer (PE) in mechanical or architectural engineering
• Building Operator Certification (BOC) Level II
• Certified Energy Manager (CEM)
• Certified Commissioning Professional (CCP)
• Commissioning Authority (CxA)
• Existing Building Commissioning Professional (EBCP)
• Sustainable Building Science Technology Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS)

Although the City of Seattle cannot make any recommendations or referrals to a Tune-Up Specialist, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Council (NEEC) has a directory of qualified Tune-Ups Specialists. If you meet the qualifications of a Tune-Up Specialist and would like to be a part of this list, please contact Brittany Quigley, Project Director at [email protected].

To learn more about Seattle Building Tune-Ups visit www.seattle.gov/buildingtuneups.

The City of Seattle is recruiting owners of 100 mid-size buildings (100,000 SF or less excluding parking) to enroll in the new Tune-Up Accelerator Program to get a jump-start on meeting the upcoming Seattle Building Tune-Ups requirement.

Seattle City Light and Office of Sustainability and Environment have partnered to offer financial incentives of up to $0.12 per square foot. Additional technical support from Smart Buildings Center and support and UW Integrated Design Lab is also available.

The incentive is estimated to cover at least 50% of the typical cost of a tune-up. In most cases, the simple payback from the electric energy savings alone would be 1.5 years. These incentives won’t be available after the tune-up requirement is fully implemented, so enroll soon to take advantage of the incentives before they disappear.

Find the Program Application, Tune-Up Accelerator Service Provider List and additional program details on the website. Enroll by December 1, 2017. Questions? Email [email protected] or call 206-233-7184.