Webinar Series: Learn From the Best
Every year, as we read through hundreds of Partner of the Year Award applications, we get to see the very best examples of leadership, innovation, and excellence. Below is the first of this year's series of webinars featuring 2024 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award winners. Stay tuned as we add more!
Current Series
Go Boldly: Decarbonization Strategies for Commercial & Industrial Operations
Tuesday, October 22, at 2:00pm ET
Decarbonization strategies lay critical foundations for businesses to address the challenges of climate change, comply with regional legislation, and become more efficient with energy consumption and cost. Emerson is an ENERGY STAR Industrial partner and 2024 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year that has developed and begun acting on a long-term decarbonization strategy in support of its target to achieve Net Zero across Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions by 2045 from a 2021 baseline.
Emerson operates a network of global properties that range from diverse factory environments and foundries to distribution centers and large office buildings, so its decarbonization strategy addresses areas of priority across many ENERGY STAR focus groups. Join this webinar to hear Emerson present its Net Zero roadmap, action plan for reducing emissions, and framework for environmental sustainability.
Speaker:
- Michael Barkan, Sustainable Energy Manager, Emerson
Mike Barkan is Emerson’s Sustainable Energy Manager, leading the company’s centralized Scope 1 and 2 reduction program in pursuit of achieving Net Zero operations by 2030. Over the past two years with the team, he has conducted ENERGY STAR Energy Treasure Hunts across 3 continents while leading Emerson’s energy management program, driven global renewable energy procurement initiatives, and implemented Emerson’s Internal Carbon price program. Before joining Emerson’s sustainability team, Mike held roles in Emerson’s rotational program in Atlanta and Minneapolis, and he currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Class is in Session: How Schools Are Engaging Staff and Students around Energy Efficiency
Thursday, November 21, at 2:00pm ET
With rising fuel and energy costs, day-to-day attention on energy usage is needed now more than ever. Join this webinar to hear how adding an Energy Use Intensity-based (EUI-based) Incentive Program has helped Pinellas County Schools take control of their energy usage, improve participation, and reward decarbonization efforts made at each site. They will discuss how to design participation classes, how to select a target EUI, and the appropriation of funds. You'll also hear from Gresham-Barlow School District, about its Advanced Energy Management (AEM) Energy Champions program that employs high-school students in a paid internship in which they actively support the AEM Shutdown with ENERGY STAR program.
Speakers:
- Clint Herbic, Chief Operations Officer, Pinellas County Schools
- Terry Taylor, Director of Facilities, Gresham-Barlow School District
Clint Herbic served Pinellas County Schools for 16 years as a social studies teacher and basketball coach before becoming a school administrator in 2004. He then went on to serve as a high school assistant principal at three schools until November 2009, when he was selected as the principal of Tarpon Springs High School. His mid-year appointment came at a time when Tarpon Springs was a D-rated school and when the school was under the watch of a state reading intervention team. The school earned its first school grade of A in the spring of 2010 enroute to ending the necessity of state oversight. Tarpon Springs remains the only high school in Pinellas County School history to move from a D to an A in one year.
Mr. Herbic accepted the position of Chief Operations Officer in June 2014. As Chief Operations Officer, he is responsible for the coordination of services provided by the twelve departments which support the operations of the district. The departments and key operations include: schools police, transportation, food service, maintenance, facilities design & construction, real estate, warehousing, energy management, safety and security, threat management, emergency management, and central printing. He has shaped the district’s energy conservation measures which has resulted in over $63 million in energy savings since 2015, and is currently leading the efforts to transform a closed school building in St. Petersburg into affordable housing for teachers and district support staff.
Terry Taylor has been an educational facility management professional for over 40 years. His career began at Mercer Island SD, where he worked into the position of Operations Director and oversaw DDC and Utility Management. Terry joined Applied Computer Technologies (ACT) and worked with Maintenance (Facilities) Departments in hundreds of school districts and colleges across the nation, helping them branch-out in Utility Management. Mr. Taylor accepted the Director of Maintenance position for Northshore SD, where he reduced utility costs by $800,000/year. Currently, Terry is Director of Facilities for Gresham-Barlow SD, which has achieved an energy reduction of 51% and saves 1.5M+ annually.
Making Data Actionable: When and How Data Can Trigger Decisions
Thursday, December 5, at 2:00pm ET
Continuous improvement of energy performance requires establishing effective energy management practices and processes. With current technology and a drive for energy efficiency, organizations of any kind can effectively use the endless data available to them to create an actionable energy management strategy. Join this webinar to hear from representatives across two different sectors — schools and real estate—about how they are doing just that.
- Des Moines Public Schools will discuss how they are using a building automation system to manage more than 100,000 data points that are actively feeding data into the system from the school district’s more than 6 million square feet of occupied space.
- Empire State Realty Trust will discuss the ways in which meticulous tracking and reporting of energy data in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager® supports and drives progress towards their net zero goal. They will also include strategies for staff training as well as the timeline of platform updates and data collection, benchmarking and reporting processes, and tracking mechanisms.
Speakers:
- Tyler Puls, Energy and Environmental Specialist, Des Moines Public Schools
- Dana Robbins Schneider, Senior Vice President, Empire State Realty Trust
Tyler Puls is the Energy and Environmental Specialist at Des Moines Public Schools located in Des Moines, Iowa. In his role, he is responsible for day-to-day implementation of the District’s Environmental Health and Safety and Energy Efficiency Programs. Serving more than 30,000 students and 5,000 employees, DMPS manages 70 facilities covering more than 6-million square feet of space. Mr. Puls graduated from Wartburg College in 2009 and spent six years in the environmental consulting industry prior to joining DMPS.
Dana Robbins Schneider is Senior Vice President, Director of Energy, Sustainability, and ESG for Empire State Realty Trust. Dana is responsible to define, lead, and execute a comprehensive program for all company and property level energy and sustainability initiatives, industry leading best practices, and ESG and wellness programs, disclosure, and reporting. Dana leads the work behind ESRT’s globally recognized Net Zero work, for ESB by 2030 and the portfolio by 2035, focused on analyzing and implementing actionable measures which drive performance and payback at the whole building, systems and tenant level including proactive planning for LL97. Dana graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia in 1999 and serves on the Mayor’s Sustainability Advisory Board, Real Estate Roundtable Sustainable Policy Advisory Committee, Urban Green Board of Directors, ULI Think Tank Committee, REBNY Sustainability Committee, and is a LEED Fellow since 2016.
ICYMI
Disrupting the Status Quo to Overcome Barriers
Tuesday, September 10 at 2:00pm ET
ENERGY STAR is built on the concept of market transformation and disrupting the status quo. Join this webinar to hear from two partners who are innovating in their respective fields.
Link Logistics will discuss their strategy for overcoming the split incentive barrier that every warehouse landlord faces. They will explain their strategy in taking ownership of tenants’ utility accounts to procure and manage energy on their behalf, yielding savings for both the tenant and landlord. This allows the warehouse owner to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise have depended on tenant action.
Ventas, Inc. will explain how they linked ENERGY STAR and Kingsley scores to create a goal-setting initiative for ENERGY STAR ratings. The Kingsley Index, a real estate benchmarking tool focused on tenant satisfaction, ranks properties on a 1-100 percentile scale, similar to ENERGY STAR. Already established within Ventas for property management goals, the Kingsley Index's success inspired the sustainability team to shift from energy consumption-based goals to ENERGY STAR-driven targets, to further advance the company's Net Zero objectives.
Speakers:
- Justine Zienowicz, Sustainability Manager, Link Logistics
- Michael Braun, Director of Sustainability Engineering, Ventas Inc.
Justine Zienowicz is Link Logistics’ Sustainability Manager, responsible for overseeing all ESG reporting and communications related to the firm’s sustainability program. Over the past few years, she has partnered with Link’s Technology team to streamline and automate the firm’s data collection and reporting processes. She currently manages the go-to-market process and promotion of Link’s Energy Solutions product, the foundational piece of the firm’s sustainability program and a primary means of decarbonizing its portfolio. Before joining Link in 2020, Justine worked at Environmental Resources Management as a sustainability and change management consulting intern and as a supply chain intern at CDP, the world’s largest global environmental reporting platform. Justine earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from Emory University with a Sustainability Management concentration from Goizueta Business School. She also holds LEED AP and CEM accreditations. She is originally from Newport, Rhode Island, and currently resides in New York City.
Michael Braun is the Director of Sustainability Engineering at Lillibridge, overseeing Energy Star Certification and Net Zero Initiatives for all Medical Office Buildings at Ventas. With a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from Marquette University, Michael brings a wealth of experience in energy efficiency and sustainability.
Previously, he led a national sales engineering team at Carbon Lighthouse, crafting innovative solutions in decarbonization for Commercial Real Estate. Michael's career also includes roles in application engineering at Briggs & Stratton and mechanical development at Cummins Inc, focusing on product electrification and emissions compliance.
Past Series
You can also look back through several year's-worth of past winner webinars.