HowToPlatinum.com: Momentum Bay® helps Texas Developer Jacob White Achieve Triple LEED® Platinum, Like Hines and Adobe

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In late 2010, three Jacob White real estate developments achieved LEED Platinum certification, ranking Jacob White, Adobe and Hines as the only three private developers, owners and/or managers globally to have earned three or more Platinum certifications. Headquartered south of Houston, Texas since 1992, Jacob White is one of the world’s leading sustainable real estate innovators, providing integrated, healthy, high performance green building development, design, construction and management.

Houston, TX, January 04, 2011 (PressReleasePoint) -- Wrapping up a great 2010, Momentum Bay recently helped local real estate firm Jacob White secure the U.S. Green Building Council's rare LEED Platinum certification for three Jacob White green buildings: 12941 Gulf Freeway in Houston, 253 Medical Center Boulevard in Webster, and its headquarters at 2000 West Parkwood in Friendswood, all just south of Houston, Texas near NASA.

Globally, Adobe Corporation, Hines and Jacob White Construction are the only companies to have achieved at least three LEED Platinum certified projects (see FACT SHEET below for all organizations with two or more LEED Platinums).

Notably, Jacob White’s headquarters is the first LEED for Core & Shell 2009 certified in the world. And, the Gulf Freeway office center is the world’s third highest scoring LEED CS 2.0.

Of the world’s 7,321 LEED certified green building projects, Gold certification is the most popular, but fewer than 400 have achieved the LEED Rating System’s highest level Platinum, that is, 5.4% by project count and 4.7% by gross square feet (as of November 2010). Texas is home to roughly three percent of the LEED Platinum projects in the U.S. by square feet and project count. Roughly 60 million square feet (397 projects) have achieved LEED Platinum certification globally and nearly 40 million of those square feet (351 projects) are in the United States.

Fortunately, the real estate industry’s cumulative experience over the past 13 years on 12,600+ ENERGY STAR labeled buildings (2+ billion square feet), and 7,300+ LEED certified projects (1.3 billion sq. ft.) has nearly eliminated the former premium for sustainable real estate. Almost 30,000 more LEED projects totaling 6 billion square feet are pursuing accepted best practices as registered projects in the green building pipeline.

Prior to its LEED certification, the Gulf Freeway / Kurland Office building earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s rare “Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR®” (DEES) certification - placing it among only 250 others with this certification in the U.S. and among the nation’s top four percent of buildings designed for energy efficiency.

Each of the three LEED Platinum Jacob White buildings has received ENERGY STAR Target Finder scores of 94 to 96 out of 100, placing their intended energy performance among those of the top four to six percent of comparable buildings.

Jacob White’s expanding green building portfolio is a project of President, CEO and technology enthusiast Jeff Mickler. Jeff’s wife and business partner Holly Mickler said, “For Jeff, green building is simply good business. It’s fun and feels right as parents, good neighbors and business owners.”

Joe Webb, the projects’ lead architect with Webb Architects said, “Jeff is a true innovator, yet very practical and hands-on. He challenges teams to do their best work, designing award-winning high-performance environments for generations to come.

“The challenge on projects like these for many teams has been the learning curve related to auditing and documenting intended performance. Working at the cutting edge – pushing the limits of LEED and ENERGY STAR – makes it difficult to know where we would end up. It wasn’t easy, but it was definitely fun.”

Sustainability consultant and energy management advisor Mark Robinson at Momentum Bay (www.momentumbay.com) said, “Jeff has a great team that works well together. While his team stayed focused on design and construction, he retained Momentum Bay’s team of experts – particularly Green Building Services – for all energy modeling and LEED documentation.” GBS managed the publication of the LEED 2009 Rating System Guides, and has consulted on roughly five percent of all LEED certified projects globally.

“We have always built, owned and managed healthier, more resource efficient buildings,” said Jeff Mickler. “The most successful green building rating systems -- LEED and ENERGY STAR – happen to give us globally recognized, meaningful scorecards and metrics, helping us benchmark our buildings’ design and performance.”

Dr. Norm Miller’s and CoStar’s longitudinal real estate study entitled “Does Green Pay Off?” shows a clear market advantage for developers and owners of LEED and ENERGY STAR certified buildings: certifications yield consistently higher rents, lower cap rates / higher sales prices, higher occupancy rates and faster absorption.

Jacob White’s experience confirms CoStar’s research. These three LEED Platinum buildings’ innovative, certified combination of visible green features – green roofs, rainwater catchment, outdoor views, and even some wind turbines – along with healthier, resource efficient strategies have yielded faster rental velocity, higher occupancies and even traffic jams by passers by.

Sustainability strategist Robinson said, “What makes a green building hot is similar to what makes a hybrid vehicle hot. According to Business Week, the Toyota Prius’ radically new driving experience and visibly green design drove sales five to seven times faster than those of other hybrids. Similarly, Jacob White’s radical, visible, authentic approach to green building stops traffic and really makes sense. Two of the three buildings are 100 percent leased even in a down economy and in the suburbs.”

Beyond the visible features, two green building strategies are paramount to Jacob White: 1) ensuring a healthy, productive environment for occupants, and 2) reducing long-term operating costs through energy efficiency.

Energy modeling and ENERGY STAR’s Target Finder tool confirmed both. Jacob White’s three buildings are projected to prevent 30% to 54% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventionally designed commercial offices and medical office buildings, and use 30% to 54% less energy, saving more than $2,126,250 on utility bills over the next 25 years.”

Mickler said, “We are delighted to have achieved such high scores for exemplary design from the USGBC’s and ENERGY STAR’s green building programs. We are already pursuing ongoing certifications of these buildings’ performance via ENERGY STAR labeling and LEED for Existing Buildings Operations & Maintenance certification.”

Jacob White recognizes that designing, building and operating healthy, sustainable real estate requires a combination of green building strategies: not only energy efficiency, but also conservation and especially green power, starting early with offsite utility green energy and graduating to onsite generation.

For example, in 2007, Jacob White began purchasing 100% Green-e certified utility green electricity through GREEN POWER 4 TEXAS (www.greenpowerbroker.com), Momentum Bay’s full-service energy advisory division. Since then, Jacob White has joined the EPA Green Power Partnership as a 100% Purchaser, and became a member of its Leadership Club.

“Clearly, Jacob White knows that striving for a healthier, more sustainable future is economical and easy,” said EPA Green Power Partnership’s Director Blaine Collison. “Their green power purchase not only eliminated nearly all of the company’s carbon emissions, but also made Jacob White one of more than 100 Texas members of the EPA’s Green Power Partnership or 100% Purchasers group.”

From 2006 to 2008, Houston (Harris County) experienced 74 orange ozone warnings and scored an ‘F’ for air quality with The American Lung Association.

With grid parity already a reality in some parts of the United States, in 2010 Jacob White upgraded some of its headquarters’ offsite green power to onsite generation with the installation of two 4-kilowatt vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) by Urban Green Energy.

Savings secured by Momentum Bay and its GREEN POWER 4 TEXAS more than paid for all three projects’ energy modeling and LEED documentation, as well as even the two wind turbines at Jacob White’s headquarters.

“Like most real estate professionals, we get excited about energy efficiency technologies,” said Mickler. “But, we are most interested in how building performance impacts occupants’ and communities’ health.

“Working in a green building can provide savings on operations and maintenance expenses at a reasonable payback. But, the most important benefit is employee productivity increases of two to 20 percent. These benefits resonate with our health care, financial and business tenants.”

In early 2011, Jacob White will also co-host a media event day with The Monarch School - Texas’ healthiest, most sustainable K-12 school among 10,000+ schools (HowToGreenSchools.com).

Jacob White hopes that its small family business success story will inspire Texas’ other owners, developers, designers, contractors managers and tenants to join them in creating a healthy, sustainable Texas.

To schedule a tour of any of these green buildings, call 281-286-6666.

To learn more about evidence-based strategies for building green, contact 877-ECO-TEXAS.

FACT SHEET

Jacob White’s most notable green building strategies and achievements with these three buildings were:

• 100% offsite, utility Green-e® Certified green power since 2007
• 100% irrigation water from extreme rainwater catchment, gray water & green roof systems
• 100% lush & even edible extensive green roofs
• 90-100% direct outdoor views in regularly occupied spaces
• 82-90% construction waste diverted from landfills
• 21-57% recycled materials
• 32-60% regionally manufactured materials
• 29-67% of sites are permeable
• 30-54% less energy and carbon than average, comparable buildings
• 24-39% more energy efficient than baseline in 2004 code
• ENERGY STAR Target Finder scores 94-96 out of 100, worth $2,126,250 in 25-year projected energy savings.

About Jacob White
Headquartered just south of Houston, Texas since 1992, Jacob White is one of world’s leading sustainable real estate innovators, providing integrated, high performance green building development, design, construction (design-build) and management, such as commercial office, medical office, health care and banking projects. Jacob White is best known for its green roof systems, rainwater catchment, high scoring “Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR” and ENERGY STAR buildings, and highly ranked LEED® Platinum certified projects. Jacob White is both an ENERGY STAR Partner and a U.S. Green Building Council member – the 15th contractor and builder among 255 to have joined the USGBC in Texas. Jacob White is also the 100th Texas member in the EPA’s Green Power Partnership, and a member of its 100% Purchasers group and Leadership Club.

About LEED
The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED green building certification system is the foremost program for the design, construction and operation of green buildings. Over 36,000 projects are currently participating in the LEED system, comprising over 7.8 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and 127 countries.

Other owners with two or more LEED Platinum certified projects include:

Organization # Platinums Total Platinum GSF
Adobe Systems & Cushman & Wakefield as Agent for Adobe 4 1,242,727
Hines 3 111,329
Jacob White Development 3 82,001
Bank of America 2 2,215,021
City of Sacramento 2 950,000
Albanese Organization, Inc. 2 632,759
BP 2 411,000
Akridge Real Estate Services 2 297,369
The Tower Companies 2 216,347
Las Vegas Valley Water District 2 112,749
Autodesk 2 100,327
The Christman Company 2 81,090
Perkins+Will 2 64,769
National Audubon Society 2 29,200
National Park Service 2 24,222

Adobe and its agent Cushman & Wakefield earned LEED EB 2.0 (for Existing Buildings) Platinum certifications for 601 Townsend in San Francisco, as well as for 321 and 345 Park Avenue and 151 Almaden in San Jose, California.

Hines earned Platinums under the LEED-EB:OM (Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance) version 2009 rating system for 560 Mission and 50 Fremont in San Francisco, and under LEED CS 2.0 (Core & Shell) for 1200 19th Street in Washington, DC.

About the EPA's "Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR" certification
Created in 2004, the EPA's "Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR" designation is one of two prominent methods to distinguish the building developers', owners' and design teams' commitment to energy-efficient design. (Certification under the US Green Building Council's LEED for New Construction or LEED for Core & Shell Rating Systems is increasingly pursued in conjunction with the EPA’s DEES designation.) Once a building’s Architects of Record has completed the schematic design phase and energy modeling, the architect can submit the building’s DEES application. To date, 264 buildings in the U.S. with roughly 36 million square feet have achieved the rare “Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR” certification.

About the EPA’s Green Power Partnership and 100% Purchasers Group
The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages organizations to buy green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with purchased electricity use. The Partnership currently has hundreds of Partner organizations voluntarily purchasing billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually. Partners include a wide variety of leading organizations such as Fortune 500 companies, small and medium sized businesses, local, state, and federal governments, colleges, universities and K-12 schools. Since Texas leads the nation in wind power generation, Texas is among the most affordable states to purchase healthy, renewable electricity and to improve air quality for kids.

About Momentum Bay & GREEN POWER 4 TEXAS
Headquartered in Houston since 2002, Momentum Bay is a full-service management consulting, marketing and energy management advisor focused on sustainability. The firm equips executives and their teams to plan green strategies and execute specific projects, primarily related to green business, green building and/or green power, from strategy to procurement to messaging.

The firm’s business unit GREEN POWER 4 TEXAS is also a full-service energy management advisory providing effective energy management strategies related to demand, procurement, planning, messaging and monitoring. For example, the firm brokers offsite, onsite and mobile green energy – from Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and carbon offsets to utility green electricity to wind turbines and solar photovoltaic systems to plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) battery conversion upgrade modules for the 2006-2009 Toyota Prius.

Jacob White Development’s green design team includes:

• Webb Architects
• Jacob White Construction Company
• Buford Goff Associates, Inc.
• Commissioning: Code Consultants, Inc.
• MEP Engineering & Electrical: McDonald Electric, Inc.
• HVAC: J&S Mechanical
• Plumbing: Belknap Plumbing
• Green Building Services
• Sustainability Strategy: Momentum Bay
• Energy Management, Electricity Aggregator-Broker-Consultant, and Wind Turbine Broker-Dealer: GREEN POWER 4 TEXAS

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