BOMA program is educating the industry on energy use.

The commercial office building industry spends approximately $24 billion annually on energy.

A prevalent misconception in the commercial real estate marketplace is that owners have to spend significant capital in order to reduce energy consumption and save money.

According to BOMA (Building Owners & Managers Association) the fact is, a 30% reduction in energy consumption, which equates to $7.2 billion, is readily achievable simply by improving building operating standards.

In an effort to help the industry learn about and take advantage of these savings, the BOMA Foundation partnered with U.S. Environmental Agency ENERGY STAR[R] program to create an innovative operational excellence program.

The ground-breaking initiative is called the BOMA Energy Efficiency Program--or BEEP for short.

BEEP objectives are to educate the commercial real estate industry about the opportunity to reduce energy use and expenses with no- and low-cost solutions; develop an industry standard and set best practices for operational excellence that leverages a strategic approach and optimizes financial performance; document success through recognition of participants and properties and; communicate those successes to our industry and stakeholders.

As part of the initiative BOMA and ENERGY STAR[R] have developed an online training program for commercial real estate professionals that teaches how to reduce energy consumption and costs with no- and low-cost strategies for optimizing equipment and practices.

A new series of six courses is being offered via audio conference, with support materials delivered over the Internet in real time. Seminar times are 2:00-4:00 p.m., EST. Each seminar costs $50 per site (beginning with the September, 2006 seminars, fees will be $99/site for BOMA members and $125/ site for non-members).

These courses qualify for continuing professional development credits for the renewal of industry designations, including RPA, FMA, CPM, ARM, SIOR, SMA/SMT.

Seminar 1: Introduction to Energy Performance. This important course reviews the concepts of energy management, provides an update on deregulation, discusses why energy performance is important to building operators, quantifies the financial and environmental impact of energy management in commercial real estate, offers of no- and low-cost tips for operational adjustments, and identifies ways to use energy performance as a competitive advantage in your market.

Upon successfully completing this seminar, professionals will be able to provide an overview of the BOMA Energy Efficiency Program; read and understand an energy bill; explain how generation and transmission systems operate; create an energy management policy and plan; identify financial and environmental impacts of improved energy performance; explain the benchmarking process and its usefulness in improving the energy performance of office buildings

Other seminars in the series include How to Benchmark Energy Performance; Energy Efficient Audit Concepts and Economic Benefits; No- and Low-Cost Operational Adjustments to Improve Energy Performance; Valuing Energy Enhancement Projects and Financial Returns and; Building an Energy Performance Awareness Program.

"Energy is the largest controllable operating expense for office buildings," stated Diane S. Paddison, chief operating officer, global services, Trammell Crow Company, which donated $25,000 to the BEEP program earlier this year. "BEEP provides an innovative solution to training personnel on strategic energy management that improves the value of our assets and the quality of management we provide our tenants."

"BEEP fills an important gap in the marketplace by offering straightforward and applicable information about strategic energy management," commented Gary Wood, RPA, chair of the BOMA Foundation.

"Through BEEP, we have the opportunity to reduce commercial real estate's energy usage by as much as 30 percent, which is the equivalent of removing 120 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from the air--that's equal to 12 millions cars taken off the roads!"

For curriculum details, schedules, registration information and other resources, visit www.boma.org/aboutboma/beep.