Being in “green” shared office space can help keep your companies operating costs down.  Yes, it does cost more to go green, but the payback begins right away.  thinkspace has the ability to offer shared office space in a class A shared building and keep the lease rates reasonable.  One of the big ways we’re able to do this is because our space is operating more efficiently than before.  By going green it helps keep our costs down so that our lease rates remain attractive.  This is something you won’t be hearing from other shared serviced office space providers and executive office suites in Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish, Woodinville, and even in Seattle.
Three years ago, before going green was hot and trendy, I was learning about efficient building envelopes at the King County Master Builders Association, Built Green classes.  We made our decision to go green with thinkspace and seek LEED certification for our work space.  We wanted to make a significant reduction in our carbon footprint and one way we did it was by reducing our electricity consumption.
As part of our LEED certification, we installed commercial energy efficient light fixtures.  The model that we used was the aesthetically attractive and appealing Lithonia PWS1836 AVANTE series fixture.  This article is a follow up to the the blog post that I wrote called “Energy efficient Commecial Light Fixtures“.  In addition to using these light fixtures, we also installed Lutron occupancy sensors in each office and meeting rooms.  Even our vending machines have energy misers on the vending machine, which I’m told will save us approximately $150 per year in electricity.
I wanted to follow up with concrete facts on our energy consumption since we have completed our build out.  I also wanted to show some historical numbers for the last three years so that you can see what a few years of usage looked like before the building went green.

For August 2008, we consumed 48,600 KWH compared with 86,040 KHW in August 2007.  That’s a 37,400 KWH reduction for the same period a year prior when the building was not “green”.  To quantify that in dollars, our electricity bill is $1,841 less!  That’s a big 44% reduction in energy consumption.  I expected to see a 30% reduction in electricity expenses, but this is definitely exceeding my expectations.
“Green is the new black”.  That phrase has new meaning to me.