Leveraging energy efficiency to create asset value

General Mills has entered a 25-year energy services agreement with Unison Energy to implement an on-site combined heat and power system at the global food giant’s manufacturing plant in Hannibal, Missouri, expected to save over $30 million over the agreement’s life cycle, Unison has announced.

The system is designed to provide approximately 90% of the facility’s annual electric load and approximately 70% of its steam load, with Unison Energy handling its financing, design, construction, ownership, operation and maintenance, the company said. 

​​​​​​“By aligning our long-term Energy Services Agreement with General Mills’ utility needs and sustainability goals, and by partnering with Hannibal Board of Public Works to develop a mutually beneficial business solution, we have created a blueprint for reliable, cost-effective, and low-carbon energy solutions,” Unison Energy CEO Mariko Meier said in a statement.

The plant is one of General Mills’ largest manufacturing sites. The on-site CHP system will feed low- emissions power and greenhouse gas-free steam into the plant’s power and steam networks to reduce emissions while delivering utility cost savings, Unison Energy said in a release.

The agreement provides General Mills with a predictable, long-term energy supply, with rate escalation fixed at 2.5% annually — significantly lower than projected utility increases, Unison Energy said. The project is expected to result in more than $300,000 in energy savings in the first year. 

The CHP is also expected to reduce the facility’s Scope 1 emissions by about 57% and total site emissions by approximately 28% per year, according to the release.The reduction accounts for an estimated 5% of General Mills’ Scope 1 footprint across its global supply chain. 

The agreement is the result of collaboration between General Mills, Unison Energy and the Hannibal Board of Public Works, which worked together to develop a dedicated standby framework for on-site generation, the release states.

The deal will compensate HBPW for maintaining capacity and includes performance and outage provisions that help create “a strong example of a public-private partnership that secures long-term cost and environmental benefits for General Mills while ensuring the local utility and city government remain financially whole,” Unison Energy said. 

“This project exemplifies the strength of like-minded, public-private collaboration, to create a sustainable solution that will deliver reliable, efficient energy,” Daren Kaiser, global energy strategy leader for General Mills, said in a statement. “These forward-thinking organizations developed a plan that will allow us to balance the challenge of reducing emissions and adding needed power to the grid.”

It took developer LCOR a stack of incentives to bring down the cost of a geothermal system it installed in a mixed-use project it completed in 2024. But now the company can expect energy and system maintenance costs to be far lower in the years ahead, say the energy specialists who worked with LCOR on the project. 

“The first costs of a conventional system are always going to be cheaper, but the total lifecycle costs of a geothermal system are going to be far more financially feasible,” Arjun Mehta, vice president of Ecosave, said in an interview. 

LCOR’s 1515 Surf Avenue on Coney Island in Brooklyn is the largest district geothermal project in New York City. According to Mehta, it shows how it’s possible to install a major geothermal system in a dense urban environment. 

“In this case, there were buildings preexisting around it, so there is a very obvious logistical challenge on getting the drills into that very tight space,” said Mehta. 

The 400,000-square-foot project includes retail and other commercial space and more than 460 residential units, about a quarter of which are for lower-income households. New York City classifies the geothermal system as a district project because the property is divided into two buildings. 

To make the project feasible, LCOR relied on several public and private incentives, including $1.62 million in funding from New York’s community heat pump pilot program, $2.9 million from Con Edison’s utility clean heat program and a 30% federal tax credit.

“What makes the credit more palatable is that, once you have the high efficiency geothermal heat pumps that are connected to the same ground source loop, it qualifies a lot more equipment for the tax incentive,” Mehta said. “So it astronomically increases the incentive that you’re going to get from the federal government.”

Ecosave started work on the project months before construction began, first to conduct a feasibility study and then to drill the wells and install the piping and other system components. 

The feasibility study gave the developer a picture of the system’s expected efficiency, based on the amount of bedrock and the soil content under the foundation. 

“If there happens to be a lot of bedrock, you have good conductivity, so it allows a lot of heat flow,” said Patrick Towbin, COO and chief of engineering at Ecosave. “In areas where it has a lot of organics and mixed silts, things that don’t have good foundations, it tends to be a little more difficult, because it insulates better.”

For the project, Ecosave dug 153 bore wells to a depth of 500 feet in a pattern that matches the footprint of the two buildings. A rig can typically drill three wells a day, so for the Coney Island project it took about three months, Mehta said. Installing the piping and other components and constructing the mechanical room took another three months. 

“In ideal circumstances, it should take 6-7 months to get a geothermal system put in place,” he said. 

It’s easier to install geothermal on the front end of a new construction project, as was done here, than to retrofit an existing building, but it can be done, said Towbin. 

“It’s better to have an open adjacent field [for a retrofit],” he said. “There is technology where you can do very low profile type work [on the existing site], but it takes a lot of casing and it’s more labor intensive and more expensive.”

Retrofits will get easier in the years ahead as the drilling technology improves, Towbin said. One recent innovation is angled drilling, he said.

“You can harness more of the space with angled drilling, more of the real estate beneath the surface,” he said.  

New York state recently changed its rules to permit wells as deep as 800 feet. That will also increase the feasibility of projects — retrofit as well as new construction — Towbin said.  

“The deeper you go, the better you can store energy and harvest it later,” he said. 

Although conducting a feasibility study and drilling bore wells increases the time, complexity and cost of projects, geothermal can be cost-effective for properties as small as single-family houses, Towbin said. Once projects get past the installation phase, building operators can expect decades of predictable, clean and cost-effective heating and cooling with minimal maintenance, as long as the system is installed to the manufacturer’s specifications and is commissioned and operated correctly, the executives said. 

“Once you’ve put up all the upfront costs, you have a closed cycle of cooling loop and rejection of heat that goes in one consistent network of pipes into the ground and that’s it right there,” said Towbin. “There’s really very little other than chemistry maintenance, and some pumping maintenance and things like that. Other than the units that are actually fit out at the location, there aren’t as many workable parts or pieces of equipment as a conventional system. That’s overall why it’s cheaper to maintain for a long period.”

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By Johnson Controls

Highlights

• Buildings account for approximately 40% of global emissions

• 76% of organizations plan to use AI for workplace operations and maintenance in 2025

• 68% of US office buildings were built before 2000; aging infrastructure will require retrofitting

Building automation is entering a period of rapid transformation. Rising energy costs, stricter regulations, aging infrastructure and workforce shortages are forcing organizations to rethink how they operate. The Future of BAS white paper explores five global trends reshaping building performance, and what leaders can do now to stay at the forefront.

5 Global Trends to Watch

1. Intelligent systems

Building automation is shifting to intelligent, integrated platforms. Next-generation BAS connects HVAC, lighting, security and fire systems into one ecosystem, improving performance and reducing complexity.

2. Decarbonization and energy efficiency

With buildings contributing roughly 40% of global emissions, BAS is critical to decarbonization and energy efficiency by automating optimization and supporting compliance across regions. AI-enabled BAS accelerates real-time energy insight and predictive optimization.

3. Occupant wellbeing

Expectations for health and comfort continue to rise. BAS supports wellbeing through real-time monitoring of lighting, temperature and air quality, all of which are particularly relevant in mission-critical environments including data centers and healthcare.

4. Workforce future-proofing

As experienced professionals retire, BAS helps close gaps by reducing manual tasks, simplifying workflows and enabling smaller teams to manage complex facility environments. AI-driven automation allows teams to do more with fewer resources.

5. Retrofitting aging facilities

Buildings worldwide rely on legacy systems. Intelligent BAS platforms support retrofits by integrating with existing infrastructure, enabling modernization and extending asset life while minimizing costs and disruptions.

Building automation is evolving toward autonomous operations and AI-driven decision making. Across the trends, one message is clear: organizations that align BAS, data and automation today will be better positioned to accelerate decarbonization and energy efficiency, improve resilience and future-proof their buildings for what’s next.

FAQs

What exactly is a building automation system (BAS)?

A building automation system (BAS) is the technology that controls and monitors building systems – e.g., HVAC, lighting, energy management, security – to keep spaces safe and comfortable. BAS platforms use controllers, sensors and software to help automate routine operations and provide visibility into systems and equipment performance.

How is AI changing the way a BAS works?

AI allows buildings to adapt, learn and self-optimize. It can predict occupancy patterns, adjust HVAC parameters, detect equipment faults and identify opportunities for energy savings, helping facility teams make more effective decisions.

How does a BAS help support sustainability goals and reduce energy costs?

A BAS helps reduce energy waste by optimizing equipment operation, monitoring usage and automating efficient control strategies. Smart dashboards allow facility teams to track energy use and find opportunities to reduce waste. BAS also plays a major role in helping organizations comply with decarbonization standards.

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An aging Texas mall has cut its energy costs by around 30% and slashed its monthly energy use by about 5,000 kilowatt-hours since implementing a custom HVAC demand management solution in 2017, the energy management company that worked on the project says.

The two-level Woodlands Mall near Houston was the flagship site for GGP’s peak demand reduction initiative, which has since rolled out to other properties in the Canadian retail giant’s portfolio. GGP is the new name for Brookfield Properties’ retail division, which it adopted Jan. 5.

OTI, the energy management company that led the project, said the solution helped Brookfield control energy costs at the facility after Houston-area utilities introduced an energy pricing scheme that charges higher retail rates during peak demand periods. After implementation, OTI collected energy use data from the facility across multiple seasons to incorporate “smarter peak demand prediction and pre-cooling algorithms,” further reducing peak energy demand.

Companies in the building management space say integrated systems  — including automated HVAC controls — can significantly improve facilities’ energy efficiency and reduce environmental impacts without major technological advances or changes in regulation. 

For example, “AI-driven HVAC management software” can reduce HVAC systems’ energy use by 25%, PwC and the World Economic Forum said in 2024. The Energy Transitions Commission said in a report published last February that cutting-edge HVAC and building management systems have “a major role to play” in energy-efficiency gains.

Utility rate structures designed to reduce load on the electric grid during peak periods are increasingly common in competitive electricity markets like Texas. In addition, a growing number of local and state governments are implementing regulations that push building owners to track or even reduce their energy use.

Eight states and more than 35 cities and counties require owners of larger commercial buildings to track their intensity of energy use, according to data compiled by Facilities Dive. At least four states and 23 local jurisdictions require owners to take additional actions, such as reducing energy use or conducting audits on greenhouse gas and water usage. 

New York City’s Local Law 97, for example, requires owners of buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to reduce their carbon emissions 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2040 or face noncompliance penalties of nearly $300 per excess ton of emitted carbon dioxide equivalent. 

In Chicago, the Building Energy Use Benchmarking Ordinance has been in force since 2013. It requires owners of buildings larger than 50,000 square feet to report energy usage intensity, greenhouse gas emissions and energy performance scores — the energy-efficiency metric used by the federal ENERGY STAR program.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a stricter, more comprehensive ordinance in 2024 that would have banned fossil-fuel appliances in most new-construction buildings and existing buildings undergoing major renovations while using federal tax incentives and grant programs to incentivize electrification. The Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance has not yet passed into law amid a sharp pullback in federal support for clean building technologies.

We’re “making a big impact on energy savings and operational efficiencies across our enterprise,” Jeff Nash, vice president of national operations at GGP, said of the work his company is doing with OTI.

A novel geothermal heating and cooling system will keep approximately 68,000 square feet of building space comfortable while significantly reducing energy costs at a 130-year-old elementary school in the Chicago suburbs, Trane Technologies said June 30.

The dynamic closed loop geothermal system in Highland Park, Illinois, which taps “the superior heat transfer properties of flowing water,” has a much smaller surface footprint than some other geothermal designs, making it ideal for suburban schools, Trane says.

North Shore School District 112 combined local, state and federal incentives to offset as much as 50% of the $6.7 million project cost. The system should reduce the facility’s carbon emissions by about 30% while trimming operations and maintenance costs, Trane says.

Education institutions are increasingly interested in geothermal systems, with colleges and universities from Colorado to Vermont studying or actively building infrastructure to more efficiently heat and cool campus buildings.

North Shore School District 112’s DCL system at Ravinia Elementary School is the first of its kind to be deployed in the United States, Trane says. 

DCL systems absorb and reject heat into subsurface water. That water’s depth and flow rate varies from place to place, thus any facility owner considering a DCL system should conduct a geological study to confirm that the local resource is adequate, Trane Technologies Turnkey Project Developer Andy O’Fallon said in an email. 

If it’s not, traditional dry-rock geothermal could be more cost-effective. But those systems typically require more boreholes and have a larger physical footprint.

“The decision to pursue either option depends primarily on the available land area and hydrogeology,” O’Fallon said. “This site does not have land area to accommodate the traditional geothermal option.”

Whereas a similarly sized traditional geothermal system might need 50 wells, the system at Ravinia has just three wells drilled down 10-inch boreholes, O’Fallon said. If the aquifer’s flow rates match “the ideal predicted design,” each well could produce up to 150 tons of cooling and 50 tons of heating at full capacity, O’Fallon added. 

Above ground, the system has more than 50 water-source heat pumps, plus a single-cell cooling tower for backup cooling and an electric boiler for backup heating if needed. The heat pumps exchange thermal energy with a building water loop that runs between 40 degrees and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, O’Fallon said.

The school district already had a working relationship with Trane, which helped overcome officials’ initial hesitation about deploying an unfamiliar technology, James Bock, the district’s director of operations, facilities and transportation, says in a video describing the project.

“We knew, because of our relationship with Trane, [that] they were bringing us something that was definitely worth taking a look at,” he said.

School District 112 deployed the DCL system as part of a bigger renovation project, according to O’Fallon. Other district facilities have had retrofits to improve their sustainability recently, including roof-mounted solar panels and building automation upgrades, he added.

Trane worked with the district’s accounting firm to provide technical documentation it needed to support its application for federal clean energy tax credits, O’Fallon added.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” President Trump signed on July 4 significantly shortens the eligibility window for those credits and adds new restrictions that experts say could make them all but impossible to qualify for.

BACnet-enabled building automation systems have mitigated 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide since 1995, according to a University of New Hampshire study commissioned by ASHRAE. Another 2.06 billion tons of carbon dioxide could be mitigated by 2030 if more owners adopt the building automation and control communication protocol, the researchers concluded.  

"This study clearly shows the power of smart buildings and the critical role BACnet plays in reducing global carbon emissions," ASHRAE 2025-26 President Bill McQuade said in a statement. "For nearly three decades, BACnet’s open, interoperable framework has enabled building owners and operators to optimize energy use, improve efficiency and deliver measurable climate impact.” 

BACnet is a global data communication protocol for building control networks that was developed under the guidance of ASHRAE. It enables heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, life-safety and other building systems to communicate and cooperate, driving the efficiency of the modern built environment, ASHRAE said in a release. 

A building automation system, or BAS, plays a critical role in improving a building’s energy use – and as the dominant standard enabling systems to talk to one another, BACnet is a key part of the efficiency equation, the researchers say in the report. It’s “played a central role in expanding automation adoption worldwide,” they said.  

The researchers measured how much carbon reduction can be credited to BACnet by using a model that combines a number of factors, including regional commercial floor area, BAS adoption rates, baseline energy intensity, carbon-intensity trajectories and system performance decay to produce mitigation estimates. Through these estimates, the study — GlobalCarbon Mitigation from BACnet Adoption Commercial Building Automation Systems 1995-2030 — quantifies the global impact of the technology for the first time, ASHRAE said in a summary of the results. 

The report highlights that the open systems nature of BACnet accelerated adoption rates across four major regions — the U.S., Canada, Europe and other parts of the world — creating a cohort effect where overlapping systems compound energy savings over time, ASHRAE said. In the U.S., about 70% of the mitigation came from electricity savings, while natural gas savings played a larger role in Europe and Canada due to colder climates and gas-intensive heating loads. 

Based on social cost of carbon estimates, the 1.4 billion tons of CO2 avoided by BACnet systems have saved the global economy an estimated $266 billion in climate-related costs, ASHRAE said. 

There will need to be sustained maintenance of BAS systems and a broader deployment of the technology in under-automated building segments if organizations and governments are to maximize the carbon value of electricity savings, ASHRAE said. The findings underscore that, while grid decarbonization is important, the efficiency provided by building automation systems remains a “near-term mitigation powerhouse,” the organization said.  

The study projects that BACnet systems could help avoid 2.06 billion tons of CO2 by 2030, “underscoring the critical role of smart, connected building technologies in achieving global sustainability goals,” ASHRAE said. 

“These findings demonstrate that BAS deliver robust and persistent energy savings, but the carbon value of those savings depends increasingly on regional grid decarbonization pathways,” researchers wrote in the study. “The results highlight the continued importance of BAS, supported by BACnet interoperability, as a nearterm mitigation strategy and underscore the need for sustained maintenance and broader deployment in under-automated building segments.

Hospitals and other healthcare providers are embarking on retrofit projects to replace aging facility infrastructure and address tightening sustainability regulations, shrinking budgets and rising patient demands, Schneider Electric says in a white paper. 

Healthcare facility retrofits are typically faster to implement, less disruptive to care delivery, more financially viable and have a significantly lower environmental impact than new construction, Schneider said in the paper, which it prepared in partnership with JLL. 

The study evaluates the energy, carbon and financial impact of nine commercially available energy and carbon conservation measures, or ECCMs, across seven hospital locations. Each project was in a distinct climate zone and had a different grid profile, with results demonstrating how conservation measure impacts can vary depending on facility location. 

For example, an upgrade that involved tuning building management system controls to ASHRAE Guideline 36 resulted in an 11.5% improvement in efficiency in a medical facility in New York while generating virtually no change in a facility in Italy. Similarly, a power supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, retrofit generated a relatively uniform improvement of between 2.0% and 2.6% in all nine project areas, the paper found. A project to improve envelope insulation led to virtually no improvement to a facility in Italy but improvement of 2.8% at a facility in Norway and 4.8% to one in Adelaide, Australia.

Other projects the white paper examined made programming changes to building management systems’  distributed energy resource settings; added occupancy- and daylighting-based zone controls; implemented power factor correction and harmonic reduction; combined power management software with connected metering; added energy supply management software; added a high-efficiency modular uninterruptible power supply; and deployed continuous commissioning. Continuous commissioning refers to a process where smart building systems are utilized to monitor equipment performance and identify deficiencies to be addressed continuously, Schneider says. 

A combination of six ECCMs tended to produce the most optimal results, the study found: BMS control upgrades, occupancy-based zone controls, power factor and harmonic correction, power monitoring software, power SCADA and continuous commissioning. 

“These form a core retrofit scenario for healthcare facilities worldwide,” the report said. 

The analysis found that insulation consistently failed to meet the 1% energy savings threshold when combined with other ECCMs. with digital solutions like BMS upgrades and occupancy-based controls outperforming insulation across all climate zones, according to the paper. 

“Even in cold climates, where insulation traditionally offers the greatest benefit, its impact was marginal when HVAC systems were already optimized,” the paper said. “In equipment-intensive buildings like hospitals, added insulation can trap waste heat, increasing cooling demand during moderate and warm periods.” 

Combining occupancy-based controls and BMS upgrades delivered synergistic benefits, especially in non-critical zones, according to the paper. This pairing more than doubled energy savings of BMS upgrades alone, it said. 

In regions like New York, where heating loads dominate energy consumption, the most effective measures included advanced BMS upgrades to fine-tune heating system performance, which reduced natural gas use by as much as 40%, and power monitoring and control systems that reduced electrical demand by more than 5%.

“New York delivered one of the most impressive results: an 80% reduction in total heating energy consumption from the BMS-related combination of ECCMs,” the authors said. 

Whole-life carbon analysis is essential for evaluating the true climate impact of retrofit strategies, the report states, noting physical envelope upgrades carry about three times the up-front carbon burden compared with digital or service-based interventions. 

In warmer climates where HVAC demand is driven primarily by cooling, insulation offers limited climate benefit, the paper states. Insulation can provide more significant benefit in cold regions, where heating is dominant and the grid is already clean. Even in these cases, however, switching to district heating can significantly reduce the need for insulation as the embodied carbon of the material outweighs its operational savings, the paper said. 

Generative AI models are able to produce effective retrofit decisions but do less well identifying which ones can produce the best result most quickly and at the least cost, according to analysis by researchers at Michigan State University. The study, “Can AI Make Energy Retrofit Decisions? An Evaluation of Large Language Models," is one of the first to examine how large language models, or LLMs, perform in determining efficient and effective building energy retrofits. 

Identifying the optimal retrofit solution can be critical from a cost standpoint. Light to medium retrofits can unlock between 10% and 40% in energy savings, or $0.49 to $1.94 per square foot of savings on average, according to JLL research published last September. Despite these savings, these actions aren’t being implemented at the scale required to meet decarbonization targets because of their capital-intensive nature, the report says. Decision-making complexity and the inadequacy of data and tools are also problem, according to the report.

To determine the potential of generative AI in addressing these limitations, MSU researchers tasked seven LLMs with generating energy retrofit decisions under two contexts: a technical context focused on maximum CO2 reduction and a sociotechnical context focused on minimum packback period. 

The AI-generated retrofit decisions were evaluated based on whether they matched the top-ranked retrofit measure or fell within the top three or the top five measures. The researchers then used a sample of 400 homes from ResStock 2024.2 data, spanning 49 states, to evaluate LLM performance based on accuracy, consistency, sensitivity and reasoning.  

Researchers evaluated each LLM by issuing prompts, which included an overview of 16 potential retrofit packages and building-specific information. The overview described each retrofit measure’s features like heat pump efficiency, whether insulation is upgraded and whether major appliances are electrified, alongside associated costs. 

Once fed these potential scenarios and building specific information, the LLMs were assigned the role of a “house retrofit specialist” tasked with evaluating multiple buildings, comparing costs and efficiency across all packages, and identifying which retrofit delivered the greatest CO2 reduction and which provided the lowest payback period. 

The study found that while LLMs are capable of producing effective retrofit decisions, they struggle to pinpoint the best one. The models are also notably stronger at identifying retrofit packages in a technical context that minimizes CO2 reduction than in sociotechnical contexts that minimize payback years. 

“This difference likely reflects the relative clarity and consistency of technical optimization objectives, which are more easily captured by model reasoning, whereas sociotechnical considerations involve trade-offs between economic, behavioral, and contextual factors that may be more difficult for LLMs to interpret and prioritize accurately,” the researchers said. 

The accuracy of the models in deciding the best option was as high as 54.5%, with a 92.8% accuracy rate for top-five matching, without fine-tuning. There was also low overall agreement among models, with higher-accuracy models more likely to diverge from others and lower-accuracy models showing greater alignment. 

“Overall, while the decision logic and feature focus of LLMs are generally reasonable, their accuracy, consistency, and contextual understanding must be improved before they can be reliably applied to retrofit decision-making in practice,” the authors said.

In the face of aging infrastructure, rising electricity prices and capital costs, energy savings contracts are no longer optional. By combining on-site renewables, real-time monitoring and performance guarantees, facility managers can implement upgrades and achieve up to 60% savings — without any capital expenditure, according to one company providing these financing contracts. 

Given increased demand for electricity and higher transmission, transportation and commodity costs, energy is becoming more expensive, said Patrick Towbin, chief of engineering and construction at Ecosave, an energy service company. 

His company combines financing with energy conservation measures, renewable energy infrastructure and smart building controls to convert large capital costs into fixed operating expenses, and adding an energy savings guarantee to the mix. 

The company’s contracts— like those of other companies— are gaining popularity among public municipalities and private companies, reports show, as they look to save energy through HVAC and other building system retrofits. 

“Federal programs come and go, but the core of our business is saving energy, because energy is costing more and we can do things more efficiently,” Towbin said in an interview. “There is a short-term view that the administration we have now has taken out some of the incentives, but they’ve definitively given a guaranteed runway of two years, which has actually increased the speed of a lot of these projects to actually close.” 

A trend triggered in part by the administration is that solar implementation is becoming more nuanced, he said. “People say [wind and solar] is price competitive, but only because it’s subsidized so heavily by utilities. And now that the subsidy is coming out, we’re looking at the true parity costs,” he said. “The industry has gotten smarter when they apply solar. If you’re in a place that has high power costs and you have sunshine a lot of the time, it makes sense to install it.” 

Like solar implementation, many energy savings decisions come down to data. To capture this data and help inform decision making, Ecosave offers smart building automation systems and a proprietary emissions monitoring software to track building efficiency and energy savings. 

For example, Ecosave can plug into a commercial building and see that its outside air dampers are broken, resulting in wasted energy savings opportunities. 

“You take outside air at 62 degrees, and it helps cool the inside of the building without going through any kind of cooling coils. But because that damper is broken, you can’t do that, so you’re wasting $1,617 every month,” he said. “So, we literally send them an order and say you can fix it, or we can fix it, and it will save you x amount of money and x amount of energy, because we have that kind of data to give them.” 

Energy resilience concerns, driven in part by rising costs and increasing uncertainty over reliability, is also driving demand for upgrades, according to Towbin. 

“What you’re seeing right now is that utilities are becoming less and less reliable, having more and more interruptions, low-voltage events, et cetera,” he said. “So what [companies] are doing is installing their own generation. They’re using all of the heat, and so … energy efficiency has gone up significantly with co-generation and even combined cycle generating plants that are local.” 

Cogeneration, or combined heat and power (CHP), is a type of distributed generation, which unlike central station generation is located at or near the point of consumption. By generating electricity or power at the point of use, the technology allows heat that would normally be lost in the process to be recovered to provide heating or cooling, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

“CHP applications can operate at about 75% efficiency, a significant improvement over the national average of about 50% for these services when provided separately,” DOE says. 

Through the company’s long-term contracts, which typically span between nine and 20 years, Ecosave owns the assets and takes responsibility for insurance. At the end of the contract, customers have the option to purchase equipment for fair market value.  

“It’s at the cost of the life of it, so it can be very low,” he said. “The idea is that the value of the equipment, which is still very good equipment at the end of the life of this contract, is basically assumed for a very low cost by the customer. Then they own it and have the option for us to go into a service contract, or someone else can still maintain it if they choose.”