Lowering Your Building’s Carbon Operations Through BOMA BEST (BOMA 2024)

Buildings account for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, making them crucial players in the global challenge of climate change. In fact, there are roughly 4.9 million commercial buildings in the U.S. consuming $141 billion in energy usage. What’s more, it’s estimated that nearly $42 billion is wasted annually on building energy loads.

With the pressing need to reduce environmental impacts, building owners and managers are pivotal in steering their properties toward sustainability and contributing to worldwide decarbonization efforts. In a Tuesday afternoon session at the 2024 BOMA International Conference and Expo, presenters Bala Gnanam, VP of Sustainability, Advocacy and Stakeholder Relations for BOMA Canada, and Victoria Papp, senior director, Strategy and Innovation for BOMA Canada, showcased how the BOMA BEST program can catalyze operational transformation.

Why Focus on Performance?

There are various dimensions of building performance that can be organized into three main categories: technical (operational and technological considerations); organizational (develop performance-centric culture); and behavioral (awareness, training, habits, procedures, feedback, etc.). So, why is the performance piece such an important area of focus for facilities managers?

Performance is essential because its ripple effects are so far reaching, touching a myriad of concerns, including:

• Environmental stewardship
• Compliance
• Operational cost savings
• Higher occupancy
• Increased productivity
• Energy savings
• Water savings
• Improved equipment reliability
• Higher lease rates
• Increased asset value

Gnanam noted that building owners want to realize big operational savings and doing large-scale retrofits, but the reality is that a very small number of organizations have the budgets to get their buildings to the highest levels of performance. Given the aggressive climate goals the industry is targeting, “it’s impossible for the advanced buildings alone to hit those targets,” he said. “As much as we want to push deep retrofits, we also need to understand that a path to building optimization might be a better approach because then we can identify key areas and can constantly chip away at it and realize those incremental savings that can ultimately lead to major savings at the building facility at regional, state and national levels.”

He warned that building performance isn’t a function of technology alone. While it’s one component of it, facilities managers can’t expect smart building technology or AI to achieve their targets. “The bigger area is organizational,” he said. “They need to set a performance-centric culture—and that needs to start from the top.”

Of course, government regulations play a role in building transformation as well, but “we can’t regulate ourselves out of this. We can’t [deploy] new technology and get out of this,” Gnanam suggested. “The long-term, achievable success has to come from behavioral change.”

BOMA BEST: A Pathway to Efficiency

“How do we manage it and how will that set the strategy for transitioning to a low carbon operation?” Gnanam asked. That’s where the BOMA BEST program comes in.

For the uninitiated, BOMA BEST is a building management tool that pushes sustainability and smartness in buildings, and also promotes healthy practices and efficiency, said Papp—whether that’s through energy or water efficiency, waste, resilience and the like.

“The certification truly represents a globally recognized symbol of sustainability in achievement of low carbon transition and high building performance that’s driving change,” she continued. “It helps building managers and operators understand building operation from different lenses.”

Papp noted that the program does help identify achievable small and large retrofits as well as a platform for monitoring energy, water, waste and carbon intensity.

As a performance management tool, BOMA BEST has as its program goals:

• To be accessible, inclusive and aspirational
• To be educational and provide actionable outcomes
• Improved environmental performance

Some of the benefits of participating in BOMA BEST include helping owners and managers with standardization across the board, documentation and benchmarking and, of course, return on investment.

“It’s about understanding, ‘If I put my money into a certain energy strategy or water strategy, am I going to get my money back?” Papp asked. And the answer is, yes! “Finally, it’s a way for building owners to have consistent, systematic reporting which we all know is important."

6 Focus Areas and 5 Steps to Certification

BOMA BEST offers a clear path for building owners to achieve their environmental targets that center on six key areas, including: energy and carbon, water, indoor air quality, accessibility and wellness, custodial waste, and resilience and site.

These areas offer “a holistic approach to sustainability in your building,” Papp explained. “More specifically, in the areas of energy and carbon, we start looking at assessments, planning, benchmarking, and we are fully integrated with Energy Star.”

In fact, buildings participating in the BOMA BEST program to date have realized impressive reductions and savings in several key areas, including:

• 25% reduction in annual energy use intensity
• 84% reduction in annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
• 36% reduction in annual water use intensity
• 1 in 4 buildings achieved diversion rates of 70% or higher

So, how does a building owner participate in the program and register their buildings for certification? “At a high level, there’s six, very easy steps to certification,” Papp explained. 

The first is eligibility. Is your building built? Is it occupied? If yes, then it’s eligible.

Second is registration, which involves answering some basic questions about your building, and third is completing a more detailing questionnaire about its baseline practices. Fourth is verification (which is valid for five years)—“and something that’s really unique to the BOMA BEST program is we send a third party to verify your building,” Papp said.

Finally, the building will be certified at one of five different levels: Baseline, Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. Papp noted that it’s also very easy to submit an entire portfolio of buildings rather than just one at a time, and fees are paid annually at a flat rate with no extra fees.

For building owners and managers who are serious about stepping up their sustainability game and lowering their operational carbon, the BOMA BEST program provides a clear and affordable path to help you achieve those goals.