The landline phone — remember those? — that sat on my desk rang in August 2008. On the line was the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy account manager. He kept the museum in his portfolio — tiny though we were compared to his large government and academic clients — because he liked collaborating with us on innovative energy education projects.

He wanted to introduce the museum to someone achieving remarkable feats of building energy efficiency. So a meeting was set up with him, the museum’s CFO and director of facilities, a lone mechanical engineer and me.

The engineer proceeded to give us his spiel: 

Our large, modern buildings consume enormous quantities of electricity. Electricity inevitably degrades into heat. This heat must be managed, otherwise building interiors would quickly overheat. How is this heat typically managed?  We expel it from our buildings and then use other forms of energy to do work that could have been performed with the heat energy we just threw away.

Two years later, after raising sufficient funds, the museum contracted with the consultant to conduct a top-to-bottom building energy analysis. He returned several months later with his report. 

His topline insight: The museum was producing 30 trillion BTUs of waste heat annually. We nodded politely. Sounds like a big number. 

And then you expel this heat energy from your building? 

We again nodded because that was the way the museum was designed, constructed and operated. 

But you’re buying 15 trillion BTUs of heat energy annually. Why are you throwing away an enormous amount of heat and then turning around and buying a huge amount? 

We shrugged. No one had pointed out this ridiculous situation before.

By fall 2013, with financing secured, the museum proceeded to implement the consultant’s retrofit recommendations. 

By spring 2015, we had completed the recommissioning of a new energy management system to enable the museum’s HVAC system to be more aware of and responsive to external and internal conditions, as well as two heat recovery chillers to capture and reuse previously discarded heat energy. 

The results were impressive. The museum’s carbon emissions were cut by 32% and utility expenses dropped by $231,000 annually — savings that we reinvested in our scientific and educational mission.

But there were broader benefits from the 2013-2015 building energy retrofit. The museum helped employ the factory workers in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, who built its heat recovery chillers; the truck drivers who delivered the machines to St. Paul; the riggers who carefully lifted them off of the truck and maneuvered them into the building; the concrete workers who poured the pads for them; and the numerous pipefitters, electricians, software engineers and other skilled tradespeople who worked to retrofit just this one building over two years.

The museum’s 2013-2015 retrofit set in motion an ongoing recommissioning process, whereby we continually reviewed how to further improve energy performance. 

Through 2023, the museum had reduced its energy use by 39% from the early 2000s; cut carbon emissions by 90% from their 2014 peak; and, its utility expenditures were virtually unchanged from when it opened in its current location in 1999, although energy costs have doubled over those 24 years. 

If the museum was still using as much energy now as it was 20 years ago, its annual utility bills would be $600,000 higher. 

Hundreds of skilled tradespeople have since worked in the museum over the past decade, helping us to make the building operate more efficiently, safely and cleanly. These are homegrown jobs that cannot be offshored. And while AI no doubt will provide valuable insights into how buildings can better perform, it will not replace those who actually do the work of  implementing and maintaining those improvements.

The 111 million buildings in the U.S. are responsible for 40% of all energy use in the country at an estimated annual cost of $370 billion. 

Imagine the economic, employment, educational and environmental benefits if energy-efficient buildings were not rare but commonplace. 

Yet the Trump administration has cut funding for residential and commercial building energy efficiency. Promoting building energy efficiency is yet another missed opportunity by this administration to grow secure, good-paying jobs for American workers.