A new energy ecosystem is emerging that connects smart, green buildings with a smart, green grid to optimize energy flows. Since commercial and industrial buildings represent around 40 percent of US energy use, and homes another 30 percent, this represents the most significant opportunity for energy efficiency and mass-scale renewable generation. But creating this new green energy ecosystem means linking what are today heavily "stovepiped" separate systems within buildings and between buildings and the grid. It also means expanding the definition of green buildings to include the digital smarts that connect diverse systems. The Green Intelligent Buildings Conference in Baltimore on April 2 and 3 focused on ways to build those new linkages.

"We need to find ways to make the grid smarter, to make buildings smarter and to have these smarts communicate with each other," keynoter Jeffrey Harris of the Alliance to Save Energy told the conference. This will require new technologies and partnerships that cross traditional boundaries, said the ASE vice president for programs. "We need not just utilities but private industry to be involved."

One key area where new partnerships are needed is within the building industry itself, between green builders and building intelligence providers. A green intelligent building "not only has a bike rack, green roof and waterless urinals, but also the systems, controls and automation needed to provide improved scheduling, coordination, optimization and usability," Paul Ehrlich, of the Building Intelligence Group, wrote in an article previewing the conference.

"A green building should not be solely green, but should be green and intelligent," said J. Christopher Larry of Teng & Associates in a presentation on the topic. Director of energy engineering for the design firm, Larry said, "Some LEED firms do not know about intelligent building systems." Indeed, today's LEED Green Building standards do not directly credit building automation, though they do credit the efficiencies automation can provide. A problem is that building intelligence does not have a singular rating system. The Continental Automated Buildings Association trade group is promoting its Building IQ metric and working with the US Green Building Council to update its LEED standards. Around June a revised LEED is expected to provide more credit for building systems.

"I firmly believe smart buildings are green buildings," said Jack McGowan, head of Energy Control Inc., and president of GridWise Architecture Council. GWAC is a US Department of Energy effort aimed at developing protocols to link various pieces of smart grid technologies, and a conference sponsor. McGowan spelled out goals for significant growth in net-zero-energy buildings enshrined in the new Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) passed by Congress last year. Such buildings are energy generators as well as users, providing as much energy to the grid as they draw from it.

"The idea that buildings could give and take energy--that's where the opportunity presents itself," he said. With growth in net zero energy buildings, "We're going to see more emphasis on intelligence in buildings" to measure and manage energy and revenue flows. "My whole vision is having the smart building meet the smart grid." McGowan made these comments in a session on demand response systems which pay energy users to control grid power demand. He briefly presented an early smart building-grid marriage taking place at the University of New Mexico, where his company and a series of partners are creating a campus-wide network of smart buildings which manages loads in coordination with grid needs and stresses.

Matt Kastantin, of EnerNOC, a company which aggregates demand response (DR) resources for grid operators, noted several ways in which DR provides green benefits. Though some demand is shifted to other times, some simply is reduced. The peak power generation that is avoided generally comes from the most polluting plants. Perhaps most significantly, the systems that enable DR are a cornerstone of overall energy efficiency programs--they provide detailed energy use information that make for smart energy decisions overall. For example, smart systems reveal when buildings are overventilated.

Peter Kelly-Detwiler, a Constellation Energy vice president who oversees the energy provider's load control efforts, said the energy industry faces a "perfect storm" of energy issues including a stressed grid, energy supply and price volatility, and the need to reduce climate-disrupting emissions. The industry faces huge difficulties building new power plants and transmission lines. Constellation is looking to DR to help meet those challenges, he said.

The conference illuminated new potentials for integrating systems within buildings themselves. Ron Poskevich of Lumisys cited a key example: though lighting represents one of the largest power demands, less than six percent of lighting controls are integrated with building energy systems. That is one reason for the skyline lit up at night after most workers have gone home.

Graham Martin, founder of the EnOcean Alliance, detailed the alliance's standard for wireless switches and sensors that is now becoming common in Europe. EnOcean gear harvests energy from sunlight, thermal changes, even the mechanical energy of a switch being flipped, so it avoids costly, messy batteries. He showed the 57-story Torre Espacia building in Madrid, Spain's tallest and the tallest in the world to use EnOcean. Its 4,200 energy-harvesting switches eliminates 20 miles of cable for 1.3 tons of copper.

Comprehensive in-building wireless has value propositions beyond energy, as Tommy Russo of Akridge showed in a presentation on innovative building technologies. Chief technology officer for the DC property developer and manager, he recalled how a friend had keeled over in an Akridge building with one of the first in-building wireless systems in the United States.

An emergency medical technician had arrived and was readying to take Russo's friend to the hospital. Russo asked the EMT to use his cellular walkie-talkie to find out from the ambulance driver outside which hospital. Based on standard experience, the EMT said he could not communicate from the building garage cellular dead zone. Russo said try anyway and the astounded EMT reached his partner, so Russo could find out where to go to be with his friend. Buildings with no dead zones, where everyone including emergency services workers are never cut off, are one important benefit of increasing building intelligence.

Smart buildings and the smart grid are two elements of the digital information revolution that are spreading tendrils toward one another. As they meet they will provide huge benefits in more efficient energy use, integration of on-site energy demand and generation with the grid, and overall better functioning buildings that are better and safer places to work and live. The Green Intelligent Buildings Conference showed how these potentials are becoming an on-the-ground reality in many places. A new green energy ecosystem will be the result.