Green Power
With energy prices on the rise— and little relief in sight—Minnesota companies are looking to slash energy consumption and embrace alternative fuels. Here’s a look at several innovative projects.
BY FRANK JOSSI
With energy prices on the rise— and little relief in sight—Minnesota companies are looking to slash energy consumption and embrace alternative fuels. Here’s a look at several innovative projects.
Quality Bicycle Products has officially gone green. The Bloomington company, one of the nation’s largest distributors of bicycle parts, recently doubled the size of its warehouse, adding 120,000 square feet in a new building that will be among the most energy efficient in the state. Built to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s “Leadership In Energy and Environmental Design” (LEED) guidelines, the building boasts one of the largest solar panel arrays in the Upper Midwest, lots of natural lighting, recycled building parts from an adjacent structure, and highly efficient heating and cooling systems.
The building, on 105th Street, also features waterless urinals to conserve water and numerous shade trees that offer cover against the sun on warm summer days. The solar panels will produce 40 kilowatts of power that will be transferred into the Xcel Energy grid while the cost is offset by a 30 percent tax credit. The company also will receive a credit from Xcel in return for the power it provides.
“We have a strong culture here of environmentalism,” says Steve Flagg, Quality’s president. “It fit into our culture to do a green building. But it’s not just about doing the right thing. We’ll see a payback on the building in 15 years, or less, depending on how fast energy costs rise.”
Flagg is hardly alone. Dozens of Minnesota companies and the state have embarked on strategies to reduce energy consumption and increase alternative sources from the wind, sun, and agricultural- based products. Many invest in green technology because it fits with their company’s values, while others see it as a financial equation that helps their bottom lines. Either way, being “green” is on the ascent. It’s easy to see why—with oil prices all over the map, gas at close to $3 per gallon, and no forseeable end to the unrest in the Middle East, alternative energy is emerging as a smart investment.
“Green design and sustainable building design is growing,” says Tom Carhart, marketing director for Innovative Power Systems, the Minneapolis architecture and construction firm that installed Quality Bicycle’s solar panels, and which has worked on similar installations around the state. “I am seeing more customers putting green design into their [construction] plans. It’s become a major movement, and solar is a big part of it.”
Two thirds of the country’s electricity goes into industrial and commercial buildings, says Sean Gosiewski, executive director of the Alliance for Sustainability, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit.“Basically, the long-term goal [for the United States] should be to reduce energy use by cutting emissions 60 to 80 percent over the next 20 years to reduce the most dire impacts of global warning,” he says. “It also goes to the bottom line of business—reducing energy costs whenever possible means increased profitability.”
A glance around the state reveals other businesses investing their money in interesting strategies for decreasing energy costs and making more environmentally sustainable decisions. Here’s a look at a few of them.
FLANNERY CONSTRUCTION
Drive down I-94 through the Midway area of St. Paul and it’s hard not to notice Flannery Construction’s new, two-story building, seemingly stranded amid a series of parking lots and the backside of a strip mall on the north side of the freeway. The building itself has a number of attention-grabbing architectural features, such as paneled side facing I-94 in the form of an accordion, with large letters on each section spelling out F-L-A-N-N-E-R-Y accompanied by a playful graphic. The second floor features large south-facing windows and portholes on two sides.
Out-of-the-ordinary architecture aside, the 14,000-square-foot building’s roof features several eight solar panels that provide heat for the building’s warehouse area and for its hot water. The roof is white, to reflect the sun and keep the second-floor offices cooler in summer. Water-efficient landscaping and shade trees also help reduce the site’s heat island. The attention to energy reduction also continues inside, where in-floor radiant heat, which requires less energy than traditional heating systems, warms the offices in winter. All the efforts to make the building as efficient as possible led to a rare LEED certification. The build was the vision of Gerry Flannery, the 75-employee company’s owner, who brought together a team of subcontractors and architect Peter Kramer to create the eye-catching structure.
Flannery says that he wants his investments in the solar panels and the white roof to pay for themselves within seven years. The building only cost about 7 to 9 percent more than a conventional structure of the same size, he notes, and adds that larger buildings would likely see the costs as little as 3 to 4 percent more.
The firm’s devotion to the environment continues in other fashions, including the use of green cleaning products, a three-year commitment to buy 50 percent of its energy from wind farms in Minnesota, and a willingness to provide tours of the building to interested groups.
“I think the ball is rolling; it’s not like the 1970s where energy prices went up, and then went down, and everyone forgot about [conservation],” says Flannery. “The prices aren’t going down again this time.”
RIDGEVIEW MEDICAL CENTER
The 129-bed Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia is another leader in energy and water conservation. The hospital has embarked upon a plan, with the help of the Twin Cities Health Care Engineers Association, to reduce its energy, water usage, and waste through a number of strategies. Among them are low-flow showers and toilets, fluorescent lights, motion detectors that automatically turn lights on and off when people enter a room, and the implementation of other building-automation controls, says Todd Wilkening, director of facility services.
Wilkening adds, however, that those initiatives are “low-hanging fruit” compared to some of the hospital’s more ambitious efforts. For example, Ridgeview pipes condensing water from the cooling coils in its air handling units to a cooling tower, saving between 2,500 and 4,000 gallons of water daily during the summer months. It has a hospital-wide “energy reduction plan” to “reduce all unnecessary usage that doesn’t impact patient care,” says Wilkening, who notes that the plan ranges from deploying a “reuse” program for office supplies to requiring all new construction to exceed state energy standards by 25 percent.
Moving toward a more sustainable medical environment— one that encourages recycling and decreasing deposable items found often in hospitals—has been a challenge, but employees have embraced it. “Employees have been affected in their personal lives by high energy prices,” says Wilkening, “so they understand why we’ve focused on reducing energy consumption, and they’ve been pretty receptive.”
The hospital has not, however, invested in every green technology. Wilkening looked at green roofs—which feature vegetation and soil planted over a waterproof membrane—and decided that the “cash benefit was poor” and that they would place additional demands on the hospital’s water resources. On the other hand, he’s mulling over installing a unidirectional wind turbine designed for urban areas.
The medical center’s roofing, windows and air conditioning equipment all have high energy-efficiency ratings. While they were more expensive than their less-efficient counterparts, the “investment will pay for itself,” says Wilkening. “The green movement gets skewered because of cost but it makes good business sense—you reduce energy costs and reduce waste, and it helps the environment and our cash flow.”
WHITE BEAR RACQUET AND SWIM
White Bear Lake-based White Bear Racquet & Swim continues to see dramatic savings following the installation of ground source heat pumps to warm and cool the air in a two-year-old, 35,000-square-foot metal building that houses five of the club’s indoor tennis courts. The courts in the new building, which are served by in-floor radiant heat brought in through the ground source pumps, cost a total of $300 to heat this past winter, says Paul Steinhauser, the club’s general partner.
The club’s other courts, located in a removable tennis bubble, cost somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 to heat last winter. Better insulation and building materials helped decrease the energy bill, too, Steinhauser notes. “It was a good thing it was a warm winter because the prices were crushing other people— and us,” he adds.
Though the heat pumps cost around $70,000 more than a standard HVAC installation, the technology has begun paying for itself, he says. The heat pumps move water from a nearby wetland through pipes to the tennis center, where it comes in at 50 F and gets heated by a compressor to 75 F before being circulated through the in-floor system. The result is a “more pleasant” environment and a warmer one in winter for the players because, unlike HVAC systems, the heat isn’t blowing in from the vents and then rising quickly to the ceiling. The club also has earned federal tax credits for conserving energy.
The club employs other energy-saving features, such as motion detectors and a system that moves natural light from its roof throughout the building, allowing it to leave off electric lighting in some areas, particularly during more expensive peak periods. The investment has been worth it. “We’ve had huge cost savings and we have a better building,” says Steinhauser. “We’re providing our members and guests a better product.”