HOME // NEWS // VIEW //

Print

Johnson Controls Inc. is LEED Platinum

Headquarters wins honor

Firm’s Glendale campus becomes green showcase.

 

By Thomas Content

Johnson Controls Inc. has won national recognition for its corporate campus expansion, a renovation that plays into one of the company’s key growth strategies. The project at the company’s Glendale headquarters has yielded more green buildings on one site than any other corporate campus in the country the U.S. Green Building Council says. The organization has awarded the $73 million renovation its highest rating, platinum, in a green building rating system known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The rating system scores building projects based on energy efficiency and environmental attributes. The company’s campus expansion was aimed at reducing energy costs and providing Johnson Controls a showcase for its experience and commitment to energy efficiency and sustainability.

For Johnson Controls, green technologies and energy efficiency are a key growth strategy. In building efficiency business alone, the company hopes to capitalize on surging investment in green construction, which doubled from $20 billion to more than $40 billion between 2006 and 2008, according to an industry report. “We believe it was important to set an example and demonstrate the benefits of incorporating the latest green technologies, including many of our own, into a multi-building campus setting.” Company chairman Steve Roell said in a statement Thursday.

Roell said the company was hopeful that a top rating from the Green Building Council “will encourage others to improve energy efficiency and sustainability properties, be it for one building or several.” Since it opened a year ago the headquarters campus has generated attention, including 6,000 visitors. Among those are investment analysts who track the clean-technology sector. “Greener construction is likely to become the standard for new buildings in the future,” analyst Michael Lew of Needham & Co. said in a recent report. Johnson Controls’ focus on green technologies in both the car battery and building segments – which together account for 60% of global energy consumption – should drive sales growth of 10% a year and earnings growth of 10% a year and earnings growth of 10% to 15% a year; said David Leiker, a Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst, in a recent report. The campus incorporates a variety of green  technologies, including solar power, geothermal heating and energy-efficient lighting as well as Johnson Controls wireless controllers that adjust energy based on whether a specific workstation or area of that building is occupied or vacant.

Johnson Controls cited several results of the campus renovation, which added 160,000 square feet to the headquarters campus to accommodate an expansion of the company’s power solutions and hybrid battery business

  • Despite doubling its space, energy uses has fallen 21%
  • The solar electric system along N. Green Bay Ave., the second largest solar installation in Wisconsin to date, has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 827,000 pounds per year.
  • Water usage has dropped nearly 600,000 gallons a year through collection and recycling of rainwater as well as the addition of dual-flush toilets, waterless urinals and other low flow fixtures.

The investment in energy technologies on the campus will be paid back over eight years through savings on energy bills, the company said.





< More News