Jonathan (JP) Flaherty is a Senior Director and Director of Sustainability at Tishman Speyer, one of the leading owners, developers, operators and fund managers of first-class real estate worldwide. In this role, he manages sustainability certificates, investor communications, worldwide performance tracking, and technological innovation implementation. Follow him on Twitter – @flahertyjp!

1. Share your favorite energy factoid
There’s an amazing chart that the Department of Energy made that illustrates the total energy picture and how every input and fuel is used.
If you take a look at the backend, more than 61% of the energy we produce is rejected – meaning energy we’re throwing out the window. This is energy lost from distribution and through smoke stacks as thermal energy. The key point is the difference between how much energy we’re using and losing.

2. What energy conservation campaign would you start in your office or want to share with other offices?
It would definitely be to encourage offices to install light dimmers. There is a tremendous energy and cost savings potential from this simple feature. On sunny, or even cloudy days, there’s enough daylight for us [occupants] to work by. There’s no need for lights to be turned on to their highest settings. Light dimmers allow us take control of our workspace and dim down the lights accordingly. I have dimmers on every light in my own house – specifically Hue Phillips – that I think are a simple but effective strategy for offices to pursue.

3. What are you reading right now?
I read The Economist – cover to cover – every week. I love The Economist and think it’s incredibly under appreciated. They cover issues from 80% of the world. I tweet the ones I like the most. An amazing article I read recently is about Recycling in America.

4. What are some ways you reduce your carbon footprint at home?
I dim all my lights! And I have all LEDs! All of the lights can be controlled through a remote or even a phone. A cool feature of the Hue Phillips bulbs is it has a built-in customizable feature for the user to control the bulbs’ hue and intensity Additionally, you can choose which bulbs turn on. This was not a one-day project – I slowly switched over to LEDs because of the costs, not to mention my fiancée was a little skeptical at first as to why we needed these colorful bulbs.

5. What is your personal super power?
I would love the ability to ignore all distractions on command. I would only turn this ability on at work – I would be even more efficient!