Building Energy Resilience

I have the good fortune to work on leading commercial and industrial energy efficiency programs in three states in the Northeast. Two of these states undertake rigorous measurement and verification (M&V) to ensure they are delivering the savings they are claiming. In all three cases the states and their program administrators (PAs) are running programs that are pushing the boundaries of energy efficiency as they continue to advance savings in mature markets that have been served by energy efficiency programs for decades. My firm also works to implement energy efficiency projects for our select group of highly committed clients. We find energy efficiency opportunities in new construction projects that include leading international architectural and engineering firms, in retro-commissioning (RCx) projects and in energy efficiency upgrade projects.

I came across Ben Franklin’s famous saying “A penny saved is a penny earned” and it got me thinking about energy saving. Just like a heat pump seems to make energy for free (which it doesn’t, but that’s another story), saving energy through energy efficiency is a cumulative principal that saves much more than the actual kW or gallon of fuel that you’re not using. Consider the generation, distribution and transmission costs of the energy itself. By the time the kW is available at your circuit breaker, you’ve already lost 65-70% of the energy potential of that lump of coal or gallon of crude oil.

We spent last Thanksgiving in the Philadelphia area with my wife’s family, as we typically do every year. Though it’s not our usual habit, on Black Friday we ventured out to the local Target Store to do some shopping. As I recall, our purpose was to stock up on snacks for our toddler for the trip back to Vermont--it definitely was not to do holiday shopping on the most notoriously crazy shopping day of the year! While the trip to Target was fairly mundane, unbeknownst to us, as we swiped our bank debit cards to pay at checkout, our card information became unsecure in a complex data breach orchestrated from half a world away, reportedly in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Although I have commissioned a number of LEED New Construction projects, I have recently become involved in the LEED accreditation process for Existing Buildings (LEED EB). As part of the energy prerequisite, one requirement is to conduct an Energy Audit that is equivalent to ASHRAE Level 1 Energy Audit. This is the first of three levels of audits that ASHRAE has designed and more and more existing buildings are turning to this process to define energy savings opportunities within their buildings. Whether you are striving for LEED EB energy credit, or are focused on improving the longevity and operation of your building, a Level 1 Audit is a good place to define the roadmap to realizing these goals.

Energy savings opportunities can be difficult to implement at times because of the perceived financial impacts they may have on a project. All too often a short-sighted view is taken with regard to a marginal increase in project cost vs. the long term cost reduction impacts that marginal cost will achieve.

Investments in energy efficiency are often evaluated in terms of their relative financial performance. In the realm of building energy efficiency, the relative financial performance of investment alternatives is typically quantified in terms of a simple payback. Simple payback calculations may be helpful for initial screening and ranking of project alternatives, however, they can oversimplify financial evaluation to the point that the best performing alternatives are not properly quantified and identified. Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analyses, in comparison, include a comprehensive examination of all of the costs and savings attributable to the investment.

In my last blog post, I discussed the short- to medium-term hiring of an Energy Auditor. But if your firm is dedicated to energy efficiency as a matter of doing business, you are looking for a person to act in a long-term role of an Energy Manager. This position doesn't have to be full-time and it can be held by an outside consultant, but you want someone who will learn your facility, your equipment, your employees’ needs and your process needs. This can’t be a tactical strike as the energy audit is, because an audit is only a snapshot. If energy management is a goal, you need someone who will stay with your business and keep abreast of the changing needs and circumstances. This takes a high level, managerial decision to invest in the efficiency of the facility.

In my last blog post, I described the fact that there are a number of energy professionals, each with their own credentials and each of whom brings a different skill to the table. For a business owner, the variety of these professions may be a bit daunting. What type of professional do I hire to address my energy concerns?

Not too long ago, data center energy efficiency was an obscure and almost irrelevant topic of discussion for building managers and engineers. As our economy becomes increasingly digitized and productive, more and larger data centers have been developed to meet the digital demand. The media has recently reported that data centers now use close to 2 percent of global annual energy consumption. At this level of energy consumption, data center energy efficiency has rapidly become an important consideration for achieving energy conservation goals.

Are your lights on when you aren’t in your office? Do you have a problem with glare on screens or even direct line of sight glare? Bad lighting is a problem. Good lighting design is about more than energy efficiency, but should never be accomplished absent consideration of energy performance. In my last blog post I raised my concerns about the lack of progress in regulating lighting efficiency in Chapter 9 of ASHRAE 90.1. While the rest of the standard has made considerable strides in raising the bar driving more engineers and architects to learn and apply increasingly sophisticated solutions in their building designs, Chapter 9 effectively gives lighting designers a pass relative to efficiency. This translates to less efficient buildings overall as lighting efficiency “gains” in Chapter 9 are traded off against less efficient approaches to building envelope or HVAC design. In this post I want to talk solutions.