A CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF BUILDING EFFICIENCY -- PART 1

Energy efficiency will continue to matter for the next few generations for three reasons.  First, consumers of energy benefit from the reduction in energy consumption through lowered operational expenses, and second the planet benefits from lowered or eliminated operational carbon emissions.  Despite our best efforts in the last 10 years, buildings still consume roughly 40% of energy in the United States.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy

The Third Reason Efficiency Will Matter Going Forward

The rapidly growing demand for energy in the United States, attributed to high growth areas like data centers and growing cities, demands that local and state jurisdictions continue to incentivize building owners to aggressively pursue energy efficiency.  This represents an important alignment of interests.  Irrespective of whether one's goal is saving money, freeing up electricity for higher value purposes, or reducing environmental impacts, there will be no retreat on the pressure for existing buildings to reduce their need for energy.

Contemporary building science has proven that it's relatively easy to remove 60-80% of energy consumption from existing buildings.  With a thoughtful decarbonization master plan, building owners can invest strategically and holistically respecting building triggers and sequences, like end-of-life replacement, deferred maintenance, planned renovations and upgrades, and other opportunities to execute decarbonization master plan steps.  A decarbonization master plan based on triggers and sequences eliminates the risks of costly overinvestment to reach a building's full efficiency reduction potential.  This is why many people call existing buildings "virtual power plants."  Reaching a building’s optimum energy performance potential returns electric grid capacity to be repurposed for higher value uses, like data centers.

AUROS Insights demonstrates the hourly value from energy efficiency savings in the forms of 1) dollars, 2) utility units of energy, and 3) carbon emissions.  With those three metrics, it's easy to see where to get the best return on your next dollar invested in building efficiency specific to one building or across a portfolio of buildings.

If there is a watch-out, it would be to assume that these answers can be found in the hands of data scientists only.  Yes, it’s very easy to demonstrate building efficiency paths to incremental energy conservation measures using transactional data incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence.  However, without the involvement of experts deep in building science, it’s likely money will only be targeted on low-hanging fruit showing quick returns, which will jeopardize long-term returns on investment.  Without involving building science experts, data science alone will never be able to reveal the full savings potential of holistic building efficiency opportunities.  Unless the plan demonstrates a reduction of at least 60% of a building’s baseline energy consumption, teams aren’t trying hard enough and it’s quite likely the investment(s) will underperform in terms of returns on investment and reductions in building efficiency.

There are many times when investing in existing buildings is required and makes financial sense.  When those opportunities present themselves, be ready to execute a decarbonization master plan, as opposed to “replace in kind” measures.  If building owners get the most out of each investment opportunity, the benefits will be maximized in all forms – 1) dollars, 2) utility units of energy, and 3) carbon emissions.

A thoughtful decarbonization master plan for a building or portfolio of buildings includes the following steps.

1.      Aggregate building performance data from operational technologies, meters and sensors.

2.      Determine the building’s baseline performance using calibrated energy models.

3.      Model and simulate the building’s optimum performance.

4.      Develop a low-risk, defensible investment masterplan respecting triggers and sequences.

5.      Employ a digital twin or data layer to continuously measure and verify performance of investment results.

Understanding buildings as virtual power plants is the key first step en route to a contemporary energy efficiency strategy.