Businesses in Royal Oak racing to sustainability

ROYAL OAK — The city of Royal Oak has joined a program that involves businesses, community buildings and organizations in the goal of reducing energy.

Royal Oak has partnered with the Michigan Battle of the Buildings and the Small Business Association of Michigan. The Michigan Battle of the Buildings is a statewide program that recognizes businesses for reducing their energy and water use.

Royal Oak was awarded a $100,000 Community Energy Management grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to go toward encouraging and motivating businesses in the community to achieve a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Angela Fox, sustainability manager for the city of Royal Oak, hosted an informational night on Jan. 16 at the Royal Oak Public Library outlining the program to spread the word to businesses. There will also be a virtual meeting Jan. 21.

“We as a city here in Royal Oak have some ambitious goals related to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Fox.

According to Fox, this program is aimed at “community focused” organizations or businesses. This can include nonprofits, local businesses, churches, industrial buildings and schools.

“Any building outside of being a single family home is eligible to qualify,” Fox said. “When they sign up for the program, they get a variety of free services.”

The services she is referring to include energy benchmarking, energy assessments and rebate matching.

Energy benchmarking is where all the business’s data is put into a portal, where the business will be able to read and understand how it is using energy and gas.

Energy assessments are like an audit, according to Fox. They will take place over the next couple of months and help determine different types of energy within the business that needs to be changed or updated.

Once those two things are complete, each building will get a customized report from the Michigan Battle of the Buildings outlining the next steps. The report will talk about what upgrades or changes to make.

Fox said that there is going to be a certain amount of money used to help pay for these changes, but they are waiting to find out how many businesses participate for an exact number of how much money.

“This is a way for us as a city to help our community buildings, our local businesses, churches, schools, our nonprofit organizations to recognize and understand how their buildings contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions inventory and then help them take steps to reduce their impact,” Fox said.

Michigan Battle of the Buildings has been running for around a decade, but this is one of the first times the organization has partnered with a city in the way it did with Royal Oak, according to Fox.

“When I pitched this idea to them, they saw this as an opportunity to pilot more partnerships with local governments and less kind of targeting businesses and building owners directly,” she said. “I want to let my business and building owners know this is something that’s worthwhile, and then the grant funding has been pursued to help offset some of those costs.”

Taking away the hurdles of becoming a sustainable business is one of the main reasons why Fox thinks this program is going to be successful.

“We have eliminated all of the hurdles of wanting to participate; even just wanting to make your buildings energy efficient can be very overwhelming in the process for people,” she said. “So the fact that we have all of these resources and nonprofits coming to the table to help assist in these efforts will hopefully make it easier for people to not only identify where they can make change, but also implement some changes.”

Joe Gacioch, city manager of Royal Oak, said that the Battle of the Buildings is a promising project that shows Royal Oak’s “hunger” to improve its greenhouse gas emissions.

Being the brand-new city manager, Gacioch said he is excited to join a community that is committed to climate change. He believes this program provides an outlet for businesses to do what they need to do to get there.

“The hardest thing with any major change, and the climate crisis does require a lot of adaptation and change, is getting started,” he said. “I think the Battle of the Buildings helps them get started. ... Half of the battle is just getting started, I think it helps business owners get started and take that first step.”

The first year of this project will be to collect all the necessary data in the Energy Star Portfolio Manager to find changes for the businesses, according to Fox.

“This is the year really for us to get the audits done, to get the benchmarking done, to identify where those opportunities are for buildings to take advantage of,” she said. “We anticipate next year is probably when we will have those winners.”

Winners will be determined by using the data submitted to Energy Star Portfolio Manager. The U.S. Green Building Council of West Michigan will determine which competitors have shown the greatest energy reduction using each contestant’s Energy Use Intensity value, according to michiganbattleofthebuildings.org.

“A third-party verification audit will be conducted on winning buildings to ensure the data input into the ESPM was accurately reported. Each building portfolio owner is limited to one building win per annual competition,” michiganbattleofthebuildings.org states.

For more information on the Michigan Battle of the Buildings or to register a business into the competition, visit michiganbattleofthebuildings.org/royaloak.