FM Issue: Financing Renewable Energy

Every year, American building owners lose billions of dollars as they overpay for energy to power their lighting, heating, and cooling systems, as energy is wasted in obsolete equipment or leaks out of a porous building envelope. The right energy efficiency measures can reduce costs by 20% to 40%, but they can also require substantial upfront sums. Additionally, distributed generation solutions such as solar or cogeneration can be combined with efficiency upgrades to provide an even more complete energy solution.

While facility managers (fms) understand that such measures would yield savings in the long run, the cost to finance equipment upgrades seems prohibitive in the short term—another large chunk of cash diverted from more urgent investments.

Read More