At the 35th Association of Energy Engineers annual World Energy Engineering Congress in Chicago, I presented a paper that discussed some of the difficulties the sustainability movement is facing and some of the opportunities for this movement. The fundamental theme of the paper is that the “green” industry can now be thought of as more a brand and less of a movement. Realizing the power or marketing and branding, the green industry needs to take control of its image and understand the current marketplace in order to advance the cause of sustainability. The paper presented three ways the “green” industry can control its image and advance sustainability; the first is through an accurate assessment of the current marketplace, the second is a better understanding of who our customers are and how they consume energy, and the third is the continuous improvement of past goals and restructuring of future goals.
This post will not go into too much detail of each item
presented in the paper but I do want to touch on each of these subjects. The first being an accurate assessment of the
current building landscape and the affect this landscape has on the image /
brand of “green” building. As our
economy slowly climbs out of the recession we are going to face an overcapacity
of building occupancy and an even greater attention to price (sometimes known
as the bottom line effect which manifests itself in the most ironic activity
called “value engineering”). The
question then is pretty simple, does the “green” industry position itself as a
high cost option that helps the environment, or rather as a solution to lower
future operating cost?
The second topic centered on who are the people in charge of
energy consumption and how does anything “green” create value for them? The first part of that equation, who are the
people in charge of energy consumption, is not as intuitive as one might
think. They are usually a little older
and more advanced in their career and the people with the most influence over
energy consumption probably reside in the facilities or maintenance department
as opposed to the executive suites.
Their main concern is keeping buildings running and satisfying the building
occupants, not reducing their energy burden.
This leads to the second part of the equation, how does anything “green”
help them? The answer to this question
will force us to address the main drivers of energy consumption in any
building, the large motors that operate chillers, compressors, fans, and
pumps. Why install solar panels when the
chilled water plant is not automated, what benefit are lighting occupancy
sensors if the air handling units are not scheduled to turn off? We can create tremendous value for facility
managers while simultaneously reducing their energy burden by addressing the
major sources of energy consumption within a building.
The final topic dealt with building upon past achievements
and recognizing future opportunities.
This is a much more open ending topic and one that this engineer is not
best suited to answer. What should our
industry do going forward? How do we
best create value for our customers? All
questions that I addressed in the paper but found much more utility by engaging
the fellow attendees in what they thought the future of the “green” industry
would be. Let me know what your thoughts
are.
As always this blog post will end with kWh counter, this time it comes from one single ECM (energy conservation measure) that automated the chilled water plant of one of our customers (was part of a larger retrofit).
ECM: Chilled Water Optimization
Payback: 1.46 years
kWh Saved: 338,937
Author: Ryan Corrigan
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