$50 billion reasons energy efficiency works

The growth of energy efficiency has been hamstrung by its relative transparency, its invisible nature. Is it real? Does it work? A recent GreenerBuildings post authored by Evan Smith, Kickstarting the Green Economy with Building Energy Efficiency, lends credence -- $50 billion worth -- to the immediate and perpetual efficacy of energy efficiency.

Quick synopsis:

What isn't getting enough play in our green technology economy is work we can and need to undertake right away: A serious coordinated effort to deploy network-based portfolio-management energy efficiency strategies and measures across our buildings and fleet transportation systems as rapidly as possible.

Here's one specific area for consideration. United States commercial real estate (all buildings except residential housing and goods-producing industries like manufacturing, agriculture and construction) consumes energy at a substantial and growing rate. It will grow at two-thirds the rate of gross domestic product through 2025, according to the Annual Energy Outlook 2005 published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency. In 2003, the commercial building sector, which is made up of 4.9 million commercial buildings covering more than 71.6 billion square feet of floor space, consumed 17,548 trillion BTUs of energy. Estimating a conservative nominal energy cost of $10 per MMBTU, the energy bill for commercial buildings in the U.S. exceeds $175 billion annually.

What is absolutely criminal is that today, somewhere between 20 percent and 40 percent of that energy is wasted, even from buildings built within the last 10 years.

The translation of energy waste to money lost -- seemingly simple, certainly proven -- is a cognitive challenge. Utility rates go up. Buildings age and become increasingly inefficient. Property owners and managers pay their utility bill every month. They can't see the energy they're wasting, and the hole in their pocket expands. It's groundhogs' day, and hole gets deeper with each setting of the sun.

Simply stated:

Start with the $175 billion in annual energy costs for the U.S. commercial real estate. Conservatively, 30 percent is available to conserve. The savings potential therefore approximates $50 billion annually.

What to do? The article frames a common scenario for facility owners and managers, and proffers a sage suggestion amplifying the purpose and utility of Octus's Smart Energy Platform:

In most facilities, maintenance staff work on the most egregious failures when they detect them, but the reality is that maintenance only detects and addresses some fraction of failures. The energy performance of most buildings today, even new ones, relying on alert maintenance staff and manual controls, is well below optimal.

New approaches to smart building facilities portfolio management enables digital readouts on zones, nodes and systems within wired buildings that can tell maintenance the energy (and air quality, safety, carbon footprint, etc.) impact of each failure on a real-time basis. These readouts - like giving each building an MRI every 15 minutes - can help maintenance staff to rapidly staunch energy losses and conserve most of the energy loss potential identified. These technologies and approaches are available now.