• Transforming Ideas Into Action
• Combating Climate Change
  • Why Climate Change?
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  • Building Retrofit
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  • Financing
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  • What We've Accomplished
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  • Contacting CCI
• Treating HIV/AIDS & Malaria
• Fighting Childhood Obesity
• Promoting Economic Opportunity
• Creating Sustainable Development in Africa
• Enabling Sustainable Development

Building Retrofit

In a groundbreaking project with New York City, CCI and other project partners are helping to retrofit the Empire State Building to reduce annual energy consumption by 38 percent. (Credit: Empire State Building)

More than one-third of energy is consumed in buildings worldwide, accounting for about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In cities, buildings can account for up to 80 percent of CO₂ emissions. The built environment is therefore a critical part of the climate change problem – and solution. Most existing buildings were not designed for energy efficiency, but by retrofitting with up-to-date products, technologies and systems, a typical building can realize significant energy savings. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings is a priority for reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs.

The Clinton Climate Initiative’s (CCI) Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program (EEBRP) brings together many of the world’s largest cities, energy service firms and financial institutions in a landmark effort to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings. CCI works with industry, financial, government and building partners to overcome market barriers and develop financially sound solutions that accelerate the growth of the global building efficiency market. CCI provides support to building owners such as city governments, commercial portfolio owners, schools, universities, and public housing authorities in identifying, designing, and implementing large-scale energy efficiency retrofit projects and brings the owner together with the necessary contracting and financial firms for implementation.

CCI has helped initiate more than 250 retrofit projects encompassing over 500 million sq ft of building space in more than 20 cities around the world. These include municipal buildings across five cities such as Houston; more than 20 schools and universities; and the largest public housing stock in North America. In the commercial sector, CCI has initiated building retrofit projects in cities such as Chicago, New York, Bangkok, Mumbai, and Johannesburg. Private building owners working on energy efficiency retrofits include shopping mall owners in India and Korea, the Daley Center and Wien & Malkin, owners of the iconic Empire State Building.

Energy Efficiency Contracting

CCI works with its partners on different mechanisms for increasing building efficiency including retrocommissioning, building technology replacement, and energy performance contracting. In order to accelerate the growth of the global retrofitting market, CCI has signed agreements with a number of energy services companies (ESCOs) to increase the delivery of building retrofits through energy performance contracting (EPC). These ESCOs have agreed to execute projects under a unique set of contracting terms and conditions, including streamlined procurement, transparency in pricing, and other processes that reduce project cost, development time, and business risk. These ESCOs contractually guarantee energy savings and maximum project costs, agreeing to compensate the building owner financially for savings shortfalls or to make additional product retrofits at no cost to ensure that performance targets are reached. CCI has developed these approaches together with global industry leaders as best practices that can be widely shared and easily adopted.

Retrofit Financing

For many building owners, capital costs are a barrier to investing in building retrofits. CCI is working with a variety of financial institutions around the world to help owners procure financing for these projects on competitive terms using financial products and strategies that already exist in the marketplace. However, for building owners with specific needs or challenges, CCI and its partners work together to create new approaches to financing.

For example, EPC is already widely used as a method for contracting building retrofits, particularly projects in the U.S. public and institutional building sectors. By guaranteeing a minimum amount of energy savings, EPC allows all building owners to more easily estimate the payback and thus the financial returns on their energy efficiency project. To the extent an owner decides to finance their project, the savings guaranteed through EPC can be used to support debt related costs. Some owners may even be able to finance the entire cost of new equipment and technologies by using the energy savings alone, negating the need for initial capital expenditure. In this way, owners immediately realize the positive impact energy efficiency can have on operating budgets.

Purchasing Alliance

Building owners working with EEBRP can access information and discounted pricing on a number of energy-efficient products and technologies through CCI’s Purchasing Alliance. Current agreements include products within heating and cooling, building envelope and indoor and outdoor lighting. The Purchasing Alliance lowers investment barriers for products and technologies with significant energy efficiency improvement or fuel switching potential. It focuses on both emerging and mature products and technologies that may otherwise be prohibitively expensive.

Building owners can access the Purchasing Alliance products directly using their own procurement methods or as part of a larger retrofit project through an ESCO or other provider. CCI negotiates a ceiling benchmark price, not a final price, and procurement can be adjusted to adhere to a client’s existing regulations and processes.

Building Scalable Models

Building on the experience gained through initial retrofit projects, CCI and its partners are developing standardized models for procurement, contracting, project implementation, financing, and measurement that can be replicated around the world. CCI has partnered with the U.S. Green Building Council to accelerate the adoption of these models, helping owners more quickly and significantly address energy efficiency and by extension, whole-building sustainability.