VNC Panel Examines Building Automation: Energy Efficiency and Business Advantages

PANELISTS  Emily Lindahl | Oak View Group / Director, Sustainability (moderator) Greg Farley | MD Energy Advisors / Director of Strategic Energy Programs Omar Mitchell | NHL / Vice President Innovation & Growth Strategies Dani Stern | Commercial Smart Buildings at Honeywell / Senior Director, Product Management

With the NHL season starting Sept. 29 it’s the perfect time to talk hockey – and more specifically the business benefits of prioritizing sustainability and building technologies in the sport’s venues while supporting new fans.

Moderated by Emily Lindahl of Oak View Group (Pollstar’s parent company), the “Building Automatic for Good” panel kicked off by discussing the multi-year global partnership between the NHL and integrated operating company Honeywell.

Honeywell Technologies was named the hockey league’s building automatic and energy management partner in May under an agreement in which “Honeywell will support the NHL’s efforts of modernizing and creating more resilient, energy efficient arenas, practice facilities and community rinks across North America.” A press release adds that “Honeywell provides advanced, scalable and AI-enabled building automation technologies to help facilities manage increasing power and cooling demands, improve uptime for revenue-critical operations and enable reliable, uninterrupted events.”

Panelist Omar Mitchell, who serves as Vice President Innovation & Growth Strategies at NHL, explained that the league has long looked for brands and corporate partners that share its values including environmental sustainability and how to make business operations more efficient.

“Why is that? Because we play in a giant refrigerator,” Mitchell quipped. “We use a lot of energy in ice hockey, and so a lot of the strategic relationships and partnerships evolved around energy services, chemical refrigerants, LED lighting. And it was all in an effort to try and drive our 32 different franchises, to adopt these solutions so that they can showcase the latest and greatest technologies, products and services.

He added, “That’s important, but it is not the only reason why, because we at the NHL, we’re at the top of the hockey pyramid. … We have a value chain where people, kids, families go to experience our sport in community ranks, and it’s a very, very distinct asset, typically single use assets. … We need to ensure that not only are we driving efficiencies and optimizations and innovations around our patrol ranks, but also be the catalyst for changing our broader industry and trying to address one of the biggest barriers to entry – equipment and ice time. With a partner like Honeywell, with all of the offerings that they have, we see a very strategic relationship where they can help us address those concerns.”

Sustainability is often about focusing on a better world for future generations and the NHL as well is focused on the future of its fandom.

“This is not just about the facilities themselves, it’s about growing the game, the impact, the future, and longevity of it,” Mitchell says. “We know that for every kid that plays our sport between the ages of 5 to 8 years old, they are approximately 5 to 6 times more likely to become avid fans. The rationale for that is that participation directly equates to avid fandom. And so if we are to address the future growth of our game for the next 20 years, we have to be strategic right now to ensure that youth and families are coming into these assets to play the sport so that we are building the pipeline and plans for the next generation.”

Dani Stern, who serves as Senior Director, Product Management for Commercial Smart Buildings at Honeywell, offered panel attendees a look at how the company enhances multi-use facilities.

“I can’t say the exact name, but one of the top global sports brands out of Spain that everybody knows, our system is at the heart of the building, allowing them to operate 365 days a year … a venue that needs to serve many, many different purposes,” Stern says. “And the way that our system helps them do that is [through] event transitions … We talked about different energy needs, different ventilation needs … There’s a difference between an NBA team playing a game and later changing to a NHL game and having that forged integrated system has allowed the facility to plan [and] automate those event transitions, [allowing] them the flexibility in how they manage their space [with] different requirements.”

And just as the NHL is looking to build its future fan base, Greg Farley, Director of Strategic Energy Programs at MD Energy Advisors, noted that the future of colleges and universities is also tied up in how they use their facilities, whether it’s an ice rink or auditorium

“There’s all kinds of oddball use cases in the college arena that just cry out for a level of sophistication in building metering, sensoring, and automation that will help us optimize these, in some cases, very old buildings,” Farley said.

Later in the conversation Farley added that when it comes to new machine learning and AI, colleges and universities are very risk-averse and they will get more so as budgets become tighter and enrollment becomes more and more competitive.

“The number one thing that we can do for our clients is to say, well, we can go see this in action.

Let’s go to the ice rink in Easton, Maryland, and say what is your building automation control system look like? Can we take a tour of Climate Pledge Arena with my facilities team and look at what is possible? … What’s the good? What’s the bad? What’s the ugly? Where are the learning points and how can we apply this to our campus?” Farley said. “Colleges and universities will follow that if they can see that it works and they have some guarantee that their investment in that technology will return.”

_Originally reported by [Pollstar](https://news.pollstar.com/2026/09/29/building-automation-for-good-energy-efficiency-business-benefits-vnc-panel-recap/)._