Marc Zuluaga

As a VP and Director of SWA’s Multifamily Energy Services, Marc Zuluaga has directed energy audits on over 20 million square feet of existing buildings and leads a team committed to applying a rigorous technical approach to the evaluation and implementation of a wide range of building upgrades. Mr. Zuluaga is also the project manager for the Deutsche Bank / Living Cities Energy Efficiency Data Report Project. The primary goal of the project is to measure the actual energy savings of 100+ retrofit projects in order to develop the data necessary for underwriters to rationally lend against future energy savings.
Within the new construction sector, Mr. Zuluaga has overseen SWA’s high performance design and commissioning services for Dunn Developments Martin Luther King Apartments, the first high-rise multifamily ENERGY STAR® building in the country. Since the completion of this building in 2006, Mr. Zuluaga has worked with Dunn Development, Phipps Houses and other major NYC developers to continuously evaluate and refine efficiency strategies, building on previous successes.
Mr. Zuluaga has led many successful research initiatives that have been grounded in the real world challenges and opportunities uncovered in SWA’s day-to-day work for clients. Most notably, he has worked since 2005 to pioneer a retrofit approach to central exhaust ventilation systems in multifamily buildings, working openly and collaboratively with practitioners across the country. More recently, in research sponsored by the Urban Green Council, Mr. Zuluaga acted as the team leader on a project to quantify the winter heat loss due to air leakage around window and sleeve air conditioners in NYC. The study, titled “There Are Holes in Our Walls,” found that these gaps collectively represent a hole the size of a Manhattan block, resulting in an annual operating cost penalty of $130 - $180 million dollars. Mr. Zuluaga has also provided technical input to inform various policy initiatives; in 2010, he served on the NYC Green Codes Task Force that was convened by the Mayor’s Office to recommend green changes to the laws and regulations affecting buildings in New York.