The 5 Principles of Towards 50
Cross-Platform
Despite progress across the energy efficiency field in recent years, implementing upgrades remains a fractured, unfocused process. All too often, disparate projects are undertaken independent of each other, resulting in modest gains at best. Similarly, new equipment that’s not designed for real world applications fails to meet savings goals. By strategically combining initiatives and new products into comprehensive programs, Towards 50's unified, strategic approach compounds results by an order of magnitude. In fact, savings of 50 percent or more are possible for most buildings.
Data Driven
The accuracy of opportunity assessments and savings projections are the linchpin in the financial viability of energy efficiency enhancement projects. Until now, industry standard audits and energy modeling have delivered data that is directional at best, and highly inaccurate at worst. Toward's 50's investment in micro interval data analysis—Quant Efficiency's smart meter data analytics 2.0 model—promises to be the missing piece in pinpoint quantifying and tracking pre- and post-energy upgrade performance. Precision data analysis for an almost unlimited variety of energy upgrade scenarios opens the door to wide-spread efficiency upgrades as the next great reliable investment vehicle for financial markets.
Towards 50 continually analyzes building energy use data to identify pivotal junctures where an investment in solution-based technology can have a maximal impact. Case in point: Uficient’s automated thermal shades, which is are uniquely positioned to deliver dramatic natural gas demand reduction by decreasing heat loss from windows in large-scale commercial and institutional buildings. On the residential front, the construction lift under development at Human Lift will improve the economics of rooftop solar installations, ramping up the rate of adoption across the board. Towards 50 sees investing in highly focused new products as one of the key pathways to realizing revolutionary energy reduction.
Critical Innovations
Systems-Based
Advancing the concept of equipment as installed systems. Too often, the time and complexity involved in installing the most efficient and promising technologies precludes their use. Towards 50 has identified that this challenge often stems for equipment that is not designed for ease of installation or integration. By tracking each build step and monitoring associated costs in real buildings, we identify minor design changes that can vastly improve project economics. We then collaborate with equipment manufacturers to reduce the overall installed cost of systems and upgrades. The Towards 50 approach both increases the number of buildings in which efficiency improvements are cost effective and ensures that paybacks projections are not negated by installation labor cost overage.
Efficiency upgrades that can be achieved at no net cost, with accurate payback projections based on reliable financial metrics, are the key to realizing energy saving at scale. For building owners and tenants there is simply no reason to avoid upgrades that come without any added costs. And when financial institutions can finally be certain about the projections of efficiency improvements, they will embrace what can only be regarded as a lucrative new source of revenue.
Towards 50 brings engineers, policy experts, building and real estate industry professionals together with financing entities to make zero cost reliable efficiency gains a reality.