JPMorgan Chase To Roll Out Energy Savings Technology Across 30M SF Of Commercial Properties

As the commercial real estate industry stares down the potential for new federal emissions reporting rules, one major player is significantly expanding the use of a building energy savings technology across its portfolio.

JPMorgan Chase plans to implement the Nantum operating system, developed by Prescriptive Data, across a wide swath of its portfolio encompassing millions of square feet of commercial properties it owns, manages and occupies, Prescriptive Data tells Bisnow. 

The system uses artificial intelligence to more effectively monitor various building systems, including occupancy, air quality and temperature and reduce energy consumption where it's not needed.

In an interview with Bisnow, Prescriptive Data CEO Sonu Panda said he was "giddy" with excitement over the deal, which would expand the proptech firm's reach in JPMorgan's portfolio by 30 times. The deal will bring Nantum's operating system to roughly 30M SF of JPMorgan's portfolio by the end of this year, and Panda said there is the opportunity for additional expansion in the coming years.

"This notion that this transition will be so much more broad in effect and scale than the Industrial Revolution was, I give them a lot of credit for saying 'look, we have a responsibility to show the world our playbook, to lead, to move first and to encourage peers to follow quickly,'" Panda said.

JPMorgan Chase Global Real Estate Group Vice President of Sustainability Hal Corin said in a statement the technology will help the firm continue to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. 

“We’re committed to using state-of-the-art technology, including artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, to better manage decarbonization of our energy footprint across our global real estate portfolio,” Corin said. 

Prescriptive also works with other major landlords and financial institutions including Blackrock, Brookfield Properties and the General Services Administration, Panda said.

Nantum OS was born out of an in-house building operations management system called Di-BOSS, developed by Rudin Management Co. Nantum's parent company, Prescriptive Data, was spun out of Rudin in 2016 to more widely share the platform.

In a case study sponsored by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority analyzing the energy savings from Nantum OS, Rudin found that it saved approximately $5M by deploying the operating system, with cumulative energy savings surpassing 30% in some buildings.

He said smarter building management systems need to be deployed at scale, with legible and accessible data that others can use to learn from and repeat in their own portfolios.

Publicly traded real estate companies could soon be required to reveal more information about their carbon emissions and climate risks, with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month releasing a 500-page proposal for new disclosure rules.

Panda is skeptical of the traditional carbon offset system, which can cover a building's true pollution load behind purchased and unrelated energy projects. By developing more sophisticated building energy management systems, he believes a new set of best practices can more meaningfully drive down commercial real estate's carbon footprint.

"There are folks that will claim carbon neutrality ... but the minute you look at the next paragraph, you will find out it is being done through not particularly fungible offsets," Panda said. "What JPMorgan Chase is doing is saying the offset business is not an effective system."

Panda said the ability to market the Nantum system more widely was core to Prescriptive's mission of helping building owners across the commercial real estate industry achieve carbon neutrality. He said the JPMorgan system uses blockchain technology to record the use of every unit of energy, allowing companies to be transparent about when they're using renewable energy versus when they're using fossil fuel-derived energy.

He said the JPMorgan deal is an expression of confidence in the system, and he hopes it will lead to more widespread adoption.

"If you’re going to report to the SEC, you can't say to the SEC: ‘We did a lot of great work in one building.’ You have to do it at every level," Panda said. "They’re now motivated to share because this is a shared challenge."