Most offices have adequate but aging lighting systems that often operate inefficiently, can waste vast amounts of energy, and annoy employees. Wasted electricity, excessive or uneven illumination, and difficulty concentrating are three top complaints of office workers. More significantly, increasing awareness about the building sector’s growing role in climate change is shifting tenant and investor preferences and influencing owners to improve the performance of their buildings to stay competitive. U.S. buildings consume nearly three-quarters of the country’s electricity and are responsible for 39% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
A New Way to Think About Office Lighting
U.S. buildings consume nearly three-quarters of the country’s electricity and are responsible for 39 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. The technology exists to revolutionize commercial lighting: LED bulbs and today’s intelligent digital controls systems can together provide higher quality indoor environments, while saving significant energy and money. However, everybody wants a better lighting system, but nobody wants to pay for it. Owners don’t want to spend their capital budgets, especially where tenants pay the utility bills. Tenants don’t feel empowered to invest in capital projects, especially when their leases are short term. Hence the opportunity for third-party service providers. We believe that a recent business-model innovation will overcome this barrier and upend commercial lighting and other energy services. Third-party ownership models, which separate the ownership of an asset from the service it provides, have transformed other industries for the better. For example, your company probably doesn’t own its copy machines. Instead, they are owned by a company such as Xerox, which has a service contract with your company based on your needs (e.g., number of copies each month). Lighting is a perfect candidate for this sort of innovative service contract. Lumens-as-a-Service might be just the tip of the iceberg of other new as-a-service offerings, such as heating and cooling, which can drive new investment into building performance. Because when you start asking, “what do I need from my equipment?” rather than, “what equipment do I need?” you’ll start looking at your building in a whole new light.