Smart Buildings and Energy Goals for 2024
Smart Buildings and Energy Goals for 2024
The new year is a time for new beginnings and, for many of us, making resolutions for the coming year. We set goals and themes for the year, whether they be personal or professional. Maybe we should extend this tradition to companies as well? Identifying a theme for the upcoming year can help companies reach goals with respect to environmental, social and/or economic impacts.
For the built environment sector, sustainability improvements and goals are needed. For many, this means energy efficiency improvements - buildings are still responsible for 36% of global energy use! To meet goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and combat the ongoing climate crisis, the energy use of buildings must be reduced by 30% per square meter, on average, relative to 2015 levels - quite a daunting task.
In Europe, 75% of existing buildings (that’s 220 million buildings), are energy inefficient, so we still have a long way to go to meet Paris Climate Agreement targets. But beyond this, we are also now in the midst of a global energy crisis exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The resulting high energy prices mean that inefficient buildings are more expensive to operate and therefore also more difficult to rent out to tenants who don’t want to face high energy bills. In addition, legislation and policy is moving more and more towards the transition away from (foreign) fossil fuels and focusing on securing energy independence.
Energy efficiency must therefore be a top priority in 2023 for the built environment sector, not just to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but to also reduce energy consumption and dependence on foreign energy sources, especially in light of the current crisis.
How can smart buildings and smart features improve energy efficiency of buildings?
Energy efficiency measures in buildings may be passive (e.g., increasing insulation, installing more efficient equipment) or active (e.g., optimization of energy use in building operations). Active measures to improve energy efficiency in buildings is where smart technologies come into play. The impacts can be significant: basic building automation and controls can result in energy savings up to 15% in commercial buildings (and, to be fair, basic automation is pretty much standard in most European buildings). This can be improved upon (by approximately 15 - 30%) with more advanced smart systems, including integrating different building systems together, and demand-response operation of HVAC equipment and lighting.
As we always say at the Smart Building Collective, it’s not the technology or the data but how you use it that matters. Collecting and examining data can give insights into how the building is operating and allow for decisions to be made to improve efficiency, including saving energy. How can these data insights be used?
Optimization (manual interference/adjustments) in daily operation
Automated optimization/adjustments (no human interference)
Strategic decisions (e.g., shutting down the building on Fridays)
Here are five smart solutions that can be implemented in a building to actively improve energy efficiency through decision making and response to data:
We are happy to introduce you to the right people
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Spectral aims to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy
For buildings, they develop technologies that target minimizing energy waste
Spectral’s Smart Building Platform allows for real-time optimization HVAC performance
Data visualizations show the energy flow in the building
Ideal for: fixing sub-optimal HVAC operation / energy inefficiencies, benchmarking, automated reporting
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ENAPPGY is specialized on smart energy efficiency solutions for commercial Real Estate.
Integrate the newest sustainable technologies with their Smart Building platform in order to achieve the highest energy savings and at the same time
Obtain exact analytics of people, machinery, products and processes.
The objective is to deliver real-time and actionable insights while reducing energy costs for enterprise business.
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Gives an overview of building performance allowing for data-driven optimization
Consolidates data collected by the BMS, smart solutions, and other sources, into management dashboards, reports and alerts
With respect to energy savings, the platform allows for benchmarking against set targets and automates reporting to keep track of performance
Ideal for: merging data from multiple sources, benchmarking against targets
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Provides Energy Intelligence software, using pretty much any data source you want and converting all of the energy readings/data into real insights about actions to improve efficiency
Can find and notify you about opportunities for energy savings
Visualizes energy data in easy-to-use dashboards
Tailored solutions for all types of buildings including retail, hospitality and education
Can also manage entire portfolios, including benchmarking and insights unique to each building
Ideal for: tailor-made solutions, comparing/benchmarking across a portfolio
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Specializes in optimizing building HVAC systems with artificial intelligence (AI) to improve building performance
The AI Optimize platform can operate in any building, new or old, and is installed on an existing BMS system.
The software predicts building HVAC needs and makes automatic adjustments as required.
Ideal for: energy (and cost) savings and improved indoor comfort
Summary
Energy efficiency improvements in buildings are a priority to meet climate goals, and this has been further accelerated due to the ongoing energy crisis and rising energy costs. Smart solutions are an example of active measures that building owners and operators can take to improve energy efficiency. There are several smart solutions available that can be easily integrated with existing building systems and immediately collect and analyze data to give insights and automatically make adjustments to improve building energy performance. We challenge you to set a theme of Energy Efficiency for this year and smart solutions can help you meet your goals.
References:
European Commission, 2020. In focus: Energy Efficiency in Buildings. https://commission.europa.eu/news/focus-energy-efficiency-buildings-2020-02-17_en
IEA, 2022. Buildings Sectorial Overview Tracking Report. https://www.iea.org/reports/buildings
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