LBA Realty Focuses on Healthy Buildings to Expand Efficiency Efforts for its L.A. Portfolio and Lead the Way to Recovery
LABBC CASE STUDY
PROPERTY OWNER
LBA Realty
PROPERTY TYPE
Office
SQUARE FEET
10 Million (Portfolio)
Sponsoring Organizations
37.6%
Energy Reduction Since Ownership
31.3%
Water Reduction Since Ownership
2021 Innovation Awards: Industry Leadership (Private) Finalist
“In response to COVID-19, LBA quickly realized an increase in the value of creating a safe and comfortable environment for our customers. Our ESG team prioritized health and wellness in our buildings and implemented a third-party validation program to ensure indoor environmental quality was meeting the highest standards across our office portfolio.”
MICHELLE GERMAN
Director, Operations & Sustainability, LBA Realty
CHALLENGE
As a sustainability leader in the real estate industry, LBA Realty owns and operates approximately 70 million square feet of office and industrial space throughout the United States. LBA is a Department of Energy and LABBC Partner and has publicly committed to reduce energy use within its portfolio by at least 20 percent by 2023, from a 2013 baseline, and remains on track to succeed.
In 2019, the company demonstrated a staunch commitment to sustainability at two LADWP properties in Downtown Los Angeles: At the KPMG Center, LBA upgraded its energy management system and continues to implement advanced control sequences to optimize HVAC performance. At South Park Center, the company completed a garage lighting retrofit that achieved 30% annual energy savings.
Having already completed “low hanging fruit” opportunities to reduce energy and water consumption, LBA welcomed the challenge to dig deeper in 2020. The onset of COVID-19, however, quickly and unexpectedly posed new challenges, uncovering a need to develop additional operational protocols and revise efficiency measures to ensure the safety and well-being of its customers, employees, service partners and communities.
STRATEGY
As the impacts of a global pandemic started to become apparent, LBA’s “Business Continuity Task Force” partnered with its ESG team to develop and execute a comprehensive health and safety program. The resulting indoor air quality guidelines, developed in accordance with federal, state, local and CDC regulations, aimed to promote a healthy workplace by several measures: air and water quality, cleaning and sanitization, safety protocols and communication.
Conforming to ASHRAE’s Standard Indoor Air Quality guidelines, LBA’s program required increased outdoor air intake to enhance ventilation, replacement of air filters with MERV-13 efficiency filters and updated HVAC operating protocols to flush building air. Water treatment programs were also closely monitored and plumbing systems flushed regularly in buildings with reduced occupancy.
As demands from frontline workers increased, families became isolated and job losses induced financial insecurity, LBA expanded its focus beyond the four walls of its buildings to consider the wellbeing of communities that were being adversely affected by COVID-19. The company formed a community outreach committee, which identified and supported 18 charitable organizations. Contributions included 20 iPad tablets to USC Keck Medicine for use in connecting isolated patients with loved ones and 268,988 meals to the L.A. Food Bank to battle food insecurity in the community.
IMPACT
LBA transformed the challenges that COVID-19 posed into opportunities to coalesce energy efficiency and healthy buildings within its broader sustainability strategies. In addition to indoor air quality protocols, in 2020 the company partnered with UL to expand an indoor environmental quality (IEQ) program to certify its office portfolio through the Healthy Building Verification program. LBA has completed the Tier I Verified Healthy Building certification for indoor air at 12 office assets, including South Park Center, with two additional properties to be confirmed by the end of the first quarter of 2021. It also plans to pursue Tier III certification in 2021 for these additional properties to provide third-party validation and additional tenant comfort around indoor air quality, water, hygiene, light and acoustics.
In line with both its sustainability commitments and COVID-19 response, LBA partnered with Yardi to roll out a smart building program at 10 properties that provides real-time monitoring of energy meters, HVAC system fault detection and diagnostics, and other building optimization features. Known as “Pulse,” the program is projected to generate savings of 1.15 million kWh and $213,000 in 2021 for South Park Center.
Given lower occupancy coupled with the implementation of Pulse, LBA achieved positive portfolio-wide energy and water efficiency results in 2020. South Park Center and KPMG Center, its LADWP portfolio, saw average site energy use reduction of 20.2%, and source energy use reduction of 18.3%. South Park Center also achieved 13% water consumption reduction. Additionally, LBA’s larger portfolio saw a 4.8% increase in ENERGY STAR scores from an average of 92.2 in 2019 to an average of 96.6 in 2020.
