Many offices get low to average green scores

Office Building Energy Efficiency remains low, IBM's survey finds, with limited renewable energy use, wasted electricity, and few smart sensors or automated lighting and HVAC controls across major U.S. cities, though Los Angeles leads adoption.

Despite a trend toward going green, most U.S. offices get low or average grades for being environmentally friendly and few use renewable energy sources, according to workers in a poll released.

Fewer than a third of office workers said their buildings are environmentally friendly, with some not living up to green labels in practice, according to the poll of 6,486 office workers conducted for IBM Corp.

Slightly more than a third cited their buildings as average in terms of being environmentally friendly, and a third gave their buildings high scores, it found.

Fourteen percent said their buildings use renewable energy sources, while 60 percent said they do not, and 26 percent did not know or were unsure, it said.

While were beginning to see some very good examples of green or energy efficient buildings as energy efficiency gains favor in policy and design around the world, around the country, theres still plenty of room for improvement, said Rich Lechner, IBM vice president, energy and environment.

Typically, half of the electricity going into commercial buildings is wasted, such as lights being left on, and cutting waste could save $1.2 trillion across the economy, IBM said.

Roughly onequarter of workers said their buildings adjust the office environment, such as lights and temperature, automatically, based on occupancy, the survey said.

Los Angeles, which tops energy efficiency rankings in national comparisons, scored highest for building efficiency among the 16 U.S. cities surveyed, with the most respondents saying their buildings automatically adjust lights and temperature and the most saying their buildings use renewable energy sources.

The IBM Smarter Buildings study, conducted by Survey Sampling International, surveyed 6,486 office workers online in 16 major U.S. cities and the nation's energy-efficiency potential for buildings on issues such as lights turning off automatically, presence of sensors that adjust lights and temperature, use of renewable energy sources, lowflow toilets and use of airfriendly products.

The survey was conducted from March 30 to April 12, and the overall statistical margin of error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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