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About Us News & Awards The Daily Transcript Interviews PE Consulting CEO
About Us News & Awards The Daily Transcript Interviews PE Consulting CEO
| The Daily Transcript Interviews PE Consulting CEO |
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| Thursday, 22 October 2009 00:00 | |||
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For Immediate Release Following is the Daily Transcript interview with our CEO, Doug Poffinbarger. Q. What types of services does the company provide?
A. Our mission is to make going green easy and cost effective. Our niche is green buildings and clean energy solutions. In house services include: strategic planning, auditing, design and modeling, commissioning, energy management and certifications such as Energy Star, LEED and GHG emissions.
Q. Which are the most popular now, and how do you expect that to change in the future?
A. Energy auditing by quantity. We’ve audited and engineered upgrades for thousands of buildings. Energy audits are the most effective way to budget and plan improvements that reduce operating costs. Customers are waking up to the value of a holistic approach to green buildings, integrating energy, power, water and other aspects into an overall sustainability plan. We are leaders in this approach for the built environment.
Q. Who are your clients?
A. Today, most of our business is institutional (long term owners). However, we’ve worked with every type of building and facility imaginable: commercial, institutional, industrial and even residential. I’m excited about our continued growth in the local and federal government as well as new growth with industrials. We really need to rebuild manufacturing in the US. But not colossal industrial plants of the past. We need local nimble manufacturing hubs that produce products locally for use locally. It will create local jobs and reduce global pollution by orders of magnitude.
Q. Tell me about some recent projects you've worked on.
A. The City of Encinitas Civic Center energy retrofit is a great local example. We’ve won 5 awards for that project including an international award from my peers around the world, the Association of Energy Engineers. It’s a great example of an open-minded client matched with our holistic approach to energy and sustainability. We are working with the city now on improving their purchasing and management practices to enable LEED Silver or possibly Gold certification. Believe it or not, a lot of our small efforts have added up over the years to more than $1 Billion dollars in energy savings for our clients. I’m even more excited about upcoming projects. Clients are giving us more freedom to manage their energy and sustainability. That enables us to really drive down their costs and risk.
Q. What are the benefits of energy audits?
A. An energy audit, by definition will uncover energy savings opportunities. But it can be so much more! While most “energy audits” recommend changing out light bulbs and air conditioners, we approach buildings as opportunities for passive improvements to harvest or use the free energy all around us. As a result, we can actually downsize or eliminate equipment altogether. The benefits of this approach really compound, resulting in: much higher energy savings, reductions in maintenance, capital and operating costs, improvements in facility reliability, comfort and productivity and marketability. Bottom line. Don’t skimp on an energy audit. You get what you pay for.
Q. What are some of the most common changes that can be made to a facility to improve its efficiency, both in terms of retrofits and new construction?
A. The easy stuff is the energy star approach (changing out light bulbs and appliances). But that often just locks in the same basic oversized design. That's illustrated by many of the DSM programs. Far better is to integrate passive design techniques and sustainability that don’t rely on moving parts, machinery and utilities to perform. We rely on decades of practical experience, backed up by advanced modeling techniques, cutting edge technology integration and onsite generation like wind and solar to make up the balance. We’ve been using this approach for a long, long time so we know what works, when and where. The growth of the USGBC is further evidence that Architects and other design firms are finally catching on to our approach with new construction.
Q. Why is it important for a facility that incorporates solar to be efficient?
A. Two reasons: 1) There are many energy efficiency improvements that are more cost effective than solar. 2) Unless you include energy storage, like batteries, with the solar, you’re still buying energy from the utility when the sun isn’t shining. That means, air pollution is still occurring. It took awhile for the logic to catch on, but that’s why energy efficiency is finally overtaking solar as “the sexy” investment.
Q. Do you expect the region's smart grid initiative will impact your company?
A. Yes. We are well positioned because of our depth of experience integrating: demand response, energy efficiency, energy management and distributed generation like solar. This integration of smart buildings and community scale generation, such as micro-grids, has the potential to significantly drive down energy consumption, flatten out peak demand and eventually enable the replacement of fossil power with clean, non polluting energy sources. If this is executed collaboratively, not just a utility thing, but with open architecture and open access for clean energy suppliers, the economic and environmental benefits will be dramatic.
Q. What do you see as some of the most important trends for the industry?
A. Reducing GHG emissions and convergence of information technology and energy.
Q. How long have you worked for PE Consulting?
A. Since 2003
Q. How long has the company been in business?
A. Founded in 1994, incorporated in California in 2002.
Q. How many employees do you have?
A. PE Consulting is a certified small business with offices in Oregon and California, serving the Western US. We’re poised for rapid growth.
Q. What do you enjoy about your job?
A. Helping people, businesses and the environment. Creating great jobs. Doing my part in preserving resources for future generations.
Q. Anything else you'd like to talk about?
A. I hope that the silly debate about global climate change will cease and we can move on to using our collective American genius to solve this serious threat before it’s too late. Preserving natural resources for our future and stopping pollution, regardless of the source, is each of our responsibilities. It deserves our focus and our highest priority.
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PE Consulting provides "green" engineering solutions for the built environment and new construction. Our LEED certified buildings outperform our peers because we offer a unique bundling of energy, water and resource management solutions that no one else can. With hundreds of energy efficient and environmentally sustainable designs and retrofits in our portfolio, we are uniquely qualified to modernize and certify your buildings. Clean Energy
Shifting our reliance from fossil fuels is critical to our long term survival on this planet. Luckily, clean energy can be integrated into our buildings and facilities without disturbing pristine open space. PE Consulting develops clean and renewable energy solutions integrated into buildings and urban landfills.