Green is the buzzword of 2016. And for the previous 10 years, for that matter. Commercial builders are starting to recognize the tremendous savings that accompany energy efficient buildings, and the return on investment is finally starting to pay dividends.

Construction companies that are still installing inefficient utilities, such as storage water heaters, will lose their clients in the long-run. Nobody wants to buy a bulky push-to-talk phone when sleek smartphones are on the market. The same goes for commercial building project managers – they won't hesitate to look elsewhere if a company they're working with still installs outdated, costly utility systems.

Tankless water heaters make sense
Businesses want to make as much money as possible while spending the least amount doing so – this is simple economics. So, why would a CEO or president hire a construction firm to build a new office, loaded to the brim with older technology? It just doesn't make sense.

The U.S. Green Building Council estimated that in 2015, 40 to 48 percent of all commercial building projects would be classified as environmentally friendly. This equates to about $120 to $145 billion worth of market share. This trend isn't going away anytime soon either. In fact, it's only climbing.

In 2012, the USGBC reported that 41 percent of nonresidential building were geared toward energy efficiency and reducing environmental impact. This is a 39 percent increase from 2005, when just 2 percent of all projects had that end goal in mind.

How, then, do commercial builders begin building environmentally friendly homes? It starts with the appliances installed. Storage water heaters waste more energy than perhaps any other utility installed in a building because of standby heat loss. When the temperature is set to a certain degree Fahrenheit, the water is initially warmed. As it sits there unused, it cools down. When water is called upon by a faucet, it uses energy to warm up the water again to the necessary temperature. This results in thousands of lost dollars on inefficient energy use for large commercial buildings.

Electric tankless water heaters heat the water on demand using thermal optic sensors that recognize when warm water is needed and only heats the amount being used. This means that it doesn't heat a tank that will later sit there and lose temperature. It gives the end user quicker hot water supply, and saves the business operating out of the building money on its utility bill.

The driving force behind large contracts
Project managers in charge of constructing large commercial buildings are trending toward requiring LEED certification in the proposal. According to the USGBC, 71 percent of projects with a price tag over $50 million mentioned LEED. This means that if construction companies want to have some semblance of upward mobility in the industry, they need to adapt to what everyone is looking for.

More commercial building project managers are looking for LEED certification in project proposals.

While there are no LEED certified products, every energy efficient appliance contributes to the overall LEED-assigned rating – certified, silver, gold and platinum, the National Resources Defense Council reported. Of the five categories inspected in each building, water efficiency and energy and atmosphere are two that are covered by electric tankless water heaters. These systems can be used as distributed generators at the point-of-use to improve the speed of which water arrives at the faucet, as well as cut down on the overall strain being put on the system. Because water doesn't have to travel as far as it would with just one tankless water heater in place, less energy is used in the process of getting warm water to the sink, which equates to savings on the utility bill.

Electric tankless water heaters can be paired with water-efficient technology, like a low-flow faucet which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, can reduce water flow by up to 30 percent. This way the building owner is paying less for overall energy use, as well as the amount of water used each day. It's this type of resource efficiency that helps a building become LEED certified.

Overall, it just doesn't make any sense for commercial builders to install outdated technology. Rise to the top of the pack and implement energy efficient technology like an electric tankless water heater today.