InBio Case Study - How to Cut Your Gas Bill in Half
Solar Rooftop Installation at InBio Headquarters
One of our Green Business Alliance (GBA) members, InBio, now stands at over 40% GHG emissions reduction from their baseline year. They’re getting a big boost from their rooftop solar panels, but they recently received an equally important contribution by tackling energy efficiency, the “hidden fuel.”
This is a simple story about energy audits saving energy (says Captain Obvious), and one that deservingly praises a company for being proactive when it comes to their energy and carbon footprint. But it’s also a story about how it can sometimes be hard to do the simple things because, frankly, they may not get as much attention as the big ones.
Back in 2019, when I was still working full-time as a consulting engineer, I was first introduced to C3 when I met Claire Habel (formerly C3’s Commercial Program Manager) at a community meeting. A few months later, I began supporting C3 as a freelance consultant. My first project was to help a local biotech company with their “tricky” HVAC system by performing an energy assessment. A couple years and a job change later, things came full circle in a way I don’t think I would have been able to predict.
The Company
InBio, a current GBA member, has been a longtime partner of C3 and a multi-year participant in our Better Business Challenge. Let’s just say they take sustainability very seriously. In brief, some of their accomplishments in recent years include:
Rooftop solar covering 35% of their electricity
In-house composting
A new green benefits system to support employee sustainable actions
Innovative sustainable packaging implementation for refrigerated shipments
In early 2020, one thing Martin Chapman, InBio President and CEO, knew they really needed to get a handle on was their HVAC system. They felt confident about a lot of other aspects of the building’s energy efficiency, including the LED lights, insulated windows, and solar on the roof. But the HVAC remained an opportunity that they knew, at some point, needed to be addressed if they were going to achieve their goals.
The Problem
When InBio renovated its building in 2015, new HVAC units were installed to condition their lab and office buildings. The units were very capable, but with this capability came a fair amount of complexity. In what is an all too familiar story, after initial setup and some brief training on the units, InBio was handed the keys and left to figure things out.
There were a couple of problems that lingered. For one, the units had some pretty complex control sequences that were, for lack of a better word, “finicky” when trying to maintain comfortable conditions for employees and lab equipment. This led Taylor Cope, InBio’s Senior Operations Manager, to have to undergo a lot of trial and error when it came to fine-tuning the system. Eventually, he was able to balance the setpoints to maintain comfort within the space, but it became a tenuous prospect to make any adjustments, lest the cycle begin anew. This made the prospect of energy-saving schedules too daunting to risk.
To complicate matters, any adjustment to the system had to be made on a controller with a screen the size of an index card located in the electrical closet. This made quick adjustments very challenging, with no prospect for remote management of the system.
The Solution
Knowing their history of HVAC issues, InBio reached out to C3 to help facilitate an energy audit, which is where I first enter the picture. In late February 2020, I met with Taylor and discussed the potential for energy savings and improvements. I was excited to use my background doing this type of work for federal facilities and bring it to bear with a local business, and we agreed an energy audit was a great first step.
After completing the energy audit and issuing the report, we had a great discussion about potential improvements, including some long-term upgrades to the system. But the main focus was on three “quick win” items:
Contract a factory-licensed representative to recommission the HVAC units.
Install a remote dashboard and enable automatic scheduling.
Adopt a more sophisticated maintenance schedule to validate setpoints and maintain energy efficiency.
To circle back to an earlier point, these are not the type of things you will see on the front page of a company’s website when touting their green approach. With that said, these are fairly straightforward actions to implement and are likely to pay for themselves quickly. Sometimes you just need an outside expert to come in and give you a little nudge to get them done. After some good discussion, we all agreed on the next steps, and I hoped that InBio would move forward, but at this point I thought my part in the story was through.
The Impact
This is where things come back around almost two years later. I was hired by C3 in December of last year, and one of the first things I got to work on was collecting energy data from our GBA members to update progress on their emissions pledge. For obvious reasons, I was particularly curious about InBio’s progress. They had implemented the key upgrades we had discussed, and this was a chance to see if I really had any idea what I was talking about. So, you might imagine my reaction when I saw their gas bills for the first time:
“Wow!” about sums it up. In the ten months since the HVAC upgrades were implemented, InBio’s total gas usage was cut in half. This even exceeded the projections in my audit report. Combined with their energy savings from solar panels, their emissions are now over 40% below their baseline. Needless to say, InBio was equally pleased that their investment was paying off.
Having spent most of my career on the “predictive” side of energy efficiency, seeing that drop-off was a very validating experience. Not so much for me personally (though I couldn’t help but be a little proud), but to drive home the point that sometimes the simple things can have a major impact. Solar and other renewables get a lot of attention, and deservedly so, but energy efficiency has so much untapped potential.
As I said at the top, this is a simple story about energy audits saving energy. But I hope the lesson is also that it’s worth it to do the simple things. They usually work, and the best part for businesses is they tend to pay for themselves, sometimes very quickly!
Interested in joining the Green Business Alliance or having Coles help your commercial building? Email him at coles@theclimatecollaborative.org.
Note: Dr. Martin Chapman was interviewed as a part of NBC29’s Community Conversations segment and he discusses their GBA membership and this milestone HERE.