Building Energy Resilience

This is the third and final post in a series focused on the connection between energy efficiency and sound control. Actually, the choice of sound control is somewhat arbitrary, and the topic could easily have been energy efficiency and temperature control, energy efficiency and lighting design, or energy efficiency and industrial process.

Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) is an exciting new software tool used to contain energy costs and diagnose energy issues that affect the life and functionality of HVAC equipment and lighting. FDD takes the ability of the direct digital control (DDC) systems a giant leap further into analyzing the performance of these building systems.

There are a number of ways to procure design and construction services for a commercial building project. The predominant approaches are design-bid-build (DBB) and design-build (DB). The former is the practice of hiring a design team (architects and engineers) to develop a set of documents upon which multiple construction teams bid for the work. The latter, the focus of this discussion, involves the owner selecting a prime contractor or construction manager who takes responsibility for the design and construction. In some cases the contractors and their subcontractors (such as the mechanical subs) directly employ licensed personnel who provide design services; in other cases the prime and/or subcontractor hires design consultants to provide design services.

Desalination is an expensive and energy-intensive way to produce fresh water, but for some areas of the world, it is the only available option to support growing populations or to mitigate effects of degrading water resources. Are there opportunities to meet this demand for fresh water in a more energy efficient and cost-effective way?

It’s hard to miss statistics about carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions these days. News stories about CO₂ emissions have grown in frequency as scientists increasingly sound the alarm that anthropogenic global warming is indeed happening at an accelerated rate, largely due to increased CO₂ emissions. For example, a New York Times article in March 2012, “For New Generation of Power Plants, a New Emission Rule From the E.P.A.,” describes new draft standards from the E.P.A. for coal power plant emissions. “The draft rule would limit carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants to 1,000 pounds per megawatt-hour,” writes the author. One thousand pounds of carbon dioxide. But what does that look like? Even for engineers, it’s difficult to visualize.

Saving energy and promoting sustainability are the core philosophies underlying all of our client project work at Cx Associates. This strong shared belief in sustainability is part of our company’s culture. So about 18 months ago, we began brainstorming about other areas where we could extend this philosophy in our company beyond actual project work. One of the first things that came to mind was commuting, and we began to consider how we could encourage our employees to use the most environmentally-friendly means available for their commute back and forth to our office in downtown Burlington, Vermont.

This is the second in a series of posts focused on the connection between energy efficiency and sound control. It may seem intuitive that efficient mechanical systems will also be quiet mechanical systems. However, it generally makes sense from cost and performance standpoints to deliberately design with both in mind.

When I was managing business energy efficiency programs at Efficiency Vermont (EVT), I diagrammed the web of market forces that affect decisions around energy efficiency in buildings. I’ve recently been encountering those market forces and new vectors that I hadn’t even considered back in the nascent days of EVT. As a result of these encounters, I’ve realized how fundamental people are to a successful transformation of our building stock into efficient and sustainable structures. People tend to fall between the following camps:

An Energy Services Company (ESCO) is a commercial business that “will identify and evaluate energy saving opportunities and then recommend a package of improvements to be paid for through savings”.[1] Performance Contracting with an ESCO can be a very powerful tool for a company with energy saving opportunities but no upfront cash or financing options to implement the projects. An ESCO is a one-stop shop for energy opportunity identification, quantification, financing, implementation, staff training and a guarantee that the savings will cover the costs of the project. For a business, the bottom line is that one’s annual operating costs will not increase, because project financing and the cost of the ESCO are both covered in the energy and maintenance savings realized by the project. In addition, the ESCO assumes the risk of under-performance. If the savings are not achieved, the ESCO is responsible for covering the difference.

When as a facility operator you’re looking to reduce data center energy use, it can be difficult to know where to begin in the process of improving efficiency. Regardless of whether your organization operates a large datacenter, or a small server room, you probably face the same question: Should we start by improving efficiency of the actual IT equipment, the supporting systems such as HVAC, or both?