Trane Inc., St. Paul, MN, recently presented its Trane Energy Efficiency Leader Award to six customers. The customers, located in six countries, were recognized for doing dynamic work to link the physical environment of their buildings and assets to their business outcomes. The award is presented to customers across all sectors, including healthcare, education, retail, grocery, government, industrial, and commercial real estate.
   Award recipients leverage improvements in building design, renovation, construction, and operations to achieve real business outcomes, such as lowering energy and operating costs, reducing tenant turnover, creating better learning environments, and achieving improved patient outcomes.
   Award recipients were:

• Ivory Properties Group and GH Consultants Sdn. Bhd., Penang, Malaysia, for development of the Penang Times Square shopping mall. The mall was initially designed to include a conventional air conditioning system. Ivory Properties Group, with support and advice from GH Consultants Sdn. Bhd., instead opted for a more energy efficient Trane chilled-water system. The system is expected to achieve 0.63 kW/ton system efficiency on an annual basis and will be 30% more efficient than conventional chiller plants found in typical commercial buildings in Malaysia.
• Macalester College, a private college in St. Paul, MN, with 163 full-time faculty and nearly 2,000 students, was recognized for a campus-wide dedication to efficiency and sustainability. This effort led to significant energy saving upgrades on campus. Upgrades included a chilled-water system plant, an Eco House (on-campus green living experience), and the construction of LEED Platinum-certified Markim Hall. Markim Hall, which opened in July 2009, is a $7.5 million, 17,000-sq.-ft. facility housing the college’s Institute for Global Citizenship. The building is the first higher education facility in Minnesota, and one of the first nationwide, to receive the highest level of LEED certification. Energy simulation models predict that Markim Hall will use nearly 80% less energy than a standard building in an equivalent climate.
• Monterrey Tec is a private, independent educational institution with more than 8,500 teachers serving more than 90,000 students at the high school, undergraduate, and post-graduate levels at its 31 campuses in Mexico. Based in Monterrey, Mexico, the school is recognized for recent infrastructure improvements that significantly reduce annual energy consumption. As a result of the upgrades, the university has created a more comfortable teaching and learning environment while also reducing energy consumption by 13% to 15% year.
• The P.P. Porty Lotnicze Terminal at Warsaw Chopin Airport, Warsaw, Poland, serves nearly half of the passenger air traffic in Poland. The P.P. Porty Lotnicze Terminal features high-performance infrastructure systems that make the state-of-the-art terminal operationally and energy efficient, while at the same time providing visitors and workers with a comfortable environment. It is estimated that during the first 10 years of operation the infrastructure systems will save enough energy to power a city of 11,000 people for one year.
• Tishman Speyer received an award for development of the Castelo Branco Office Park in São Paulo, Brazil. Because of the investments in efficiency, the 1.1 million-sq.-ft. site provides the same quality and technology of premium areas of the state capital, but at less cost. The office park encompasses a 27-acre site that includes six towers, a horizontal corporate space for parking and services, and state-of-the-art buildings using the latest technologies in climate-control solutions.
• Transitions Optical, Galway, Ireland, the optical industry’s top photo-chromic lens manufacturer, recently completed upgrades to its plant that are generating €144,000 in annual energy savings and reduced the energy required to produce each lens by 50%. Automation has saved Transitions Optical €432,000 over the past three years, saving enough electricity to run the plant for three additional days every month.

   This group of recipients makes a total of 25 Trane customers who have received the Trane Energy Efficiency Leader Award in the past year.—Gary L. Parr