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Johnson Controls in Unique Partnership

Johnson Controls in Unique Partnership

Green initiative a model for Europe

Johnson Controls is in on the ground floor of a building program that has been revolutionizing green initiatives. And it’s doing it in a country that’s on the cutting edge of environmental efforts.
Germany has long been at the forefront of environmental programs and awareness—in fact, it’s an international leader in the use of solar energy and one of the leading proponents of environmentally responsible building retrofits and construction.
Johnson Controls has a more than 120-year history of developing and promoting sustainability projects, offering its clients a wealth of expertise in green building, carbon dioxide reductions and sustainable construction, as well as energy-efficiency systems and practices. So naturally, Johnson Controls and Germany are a perfect ecological fit.

BEA, ESCOs, CO2 and JCI

Johnson Controls is working with the Berlin Energy Agency (BEA) on a unique project to improve energy efficiency in buildings throughout the city. What makes the project so unique? The retrofits to existing buildings cost building owners nothing, making for immediate financial savings.
The BEA is partly owned by the government of Berlin and exists to organize retrofits of government and commercial buildings, creating special contracts between building owners and energy systems companies (ESCOs) like Johnson Controls—companies that provide energy solutions such as building management systems and retrofits that decrease CO2 emissions.

The Payback

As part of the contract, the ESCO must make retrofits that provide at least 26 percent more energy efficiency—those annual efficiencies result in savings that fund the cost of retrofitting a building. So, the program is self-sustaining, technically costing the building owner nothing. Instead, the ESCO pays for the retrofit upfront, securing payback over a number of years. To recoup costs, 97 percent of savings are paid back to the ESCO by the building owner during the first five years of the contract; as the upfront is paid back, more of the annual savings is passed along to the building owner.
Johnson Controls has been working with the BEA since 1999, when it entered into an Energy Saving Partnership for the Berlin District Pankow and its pool of 56 buildings for an energy-efficiency retrofit project. The main performance phase began in March 2000 and will last until 2013. The result: Johnson Controls has helped provide a 24.2 percent energy cost savings and an impressive CO2 reduction of 2,500 tons per year.
The concept is so successful that it has been duplicated in Bulgaria, Slovenia, Romania and Chile, with more than 20 projects being started throughout Europe.