The Historic John Ferraro Building Honored for its Continued Green Building Practices
LOS ANGELES (September 24, 2019) – Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proudly accepted the first-ever U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Pacific Region Leadership Award for Decarbonization at the recent annual Greenbuilder conference in San Francisco. LADWP received this award for continuing its implementation of extensive energy-efficient upgrades that focus on low-carbon strategies at its headquarters, the John Ferraro Building (JFB) in downtown Los Angeles.
“LADWP is honored to receive the recognition from the U.S. Green Building Council for the work we are doing at our own flagship facility,” said LADWP General Manager and Chief Engineer Martin L. Adams. “At LADWP, we are dedicated to changing the narrative for other utilities and organizations by actively working to establish a more sustainable culture, not only for our customers and our community, but also for our employees.”
Built in the mid-1960’s, JFB is an iconic, mid-century all-electric building with its then state-of-the-art technology to symbolize and harness its twin purpose of power and water. JFB serves as LADWP’s headquarters for a third of its 11,000 employees and houses customer service and other major operations in support of providing reliable and affordable water and power to over 4 million residents in Los Angeles.
Through the years, various energy efficiency and water conservation measures were implemented as part of LADWP’s commitment to lead by example. Beginning in 2013, LADWP identified and analyzed a suite of energy efficiency measures for the building, which led to an aggressive energy-efficiency program involving lighting retrofits, chiller upgrade, and fan system upgrades. As a result, the building achieved LEED Certification on its 50th anniversary, in 2015. A year later, JFB achieved LEED Gold and became the first building in the Los Angeles region to engage with the LEED Dynamic Plaque (ARC). It is now in the midst of pursuing LEED Zero Energy following USGBC guidelines, which recognizes buildings operating with net zero carbon emissions from energy consumption and occupant transportation to carbon emissions avoided. When completed, JFB will be the first building in California to achieve this.
LADWP is committed to its ongoing efforts to increase energy efficiency and water conservation at JFB by ramping up its in-house solar generating capacity and installing the building’s own battery energy storage system, which are all stepping stones to achieving LEED Zero Energy. Additionally, JFB regularly participates in LADWP’s demand response program, which is an incentive-based, voluntary, energy management program for businesses to help reduce their energy use and utility bills during times of peak power demand.
While the award represents green building practices at JFB, LADWP remains committed to its pursuit of a clean energy future at all of its facilities, with more efficient use of energy, greater reliance on renewable energy, zero coal and sustainable water management.
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