Facilities managers can use data from their buildings to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs
05/28/2024
Internet of things (IoT) sensors can help reduce carbon emissions and energy costs by putting actionable insight into the hands of facilities managers.
What is energy management?
Energy management is the process of planning, controlling, and optimising the use of energy. Effective energy management can achieve greater efficiency, reduce costs, and minimise the environmental impact of your buildings. It requires monitoring energy consumption, implementing strategies to use energy more efficiently, and evaluating the results to continually improve energy performance.Why is energy management important?
It’s 1:00am in a dark and silent office block. It’s empty at that time so no one registers the sudden rise in temperature from 15C to 35C. The heating plant programmed to come on at this time once a week and has been for six years since the building opened.No one wants to use energy in this way. Normally the system would be in economy mode but a test programme has been in operation since the building was commissioned, meaning once a week energy is used to heat the empty building in the middle of the night.
Who knows how long this would have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for a small device connected to the Building Management System (BMS) monitoring, among other things, the temperature in the building. The sudden spike was identified, investigated and fixed.
Energy management is a concern for executives and facilities managers
There is increased pressure on organisations environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) performance. Environmental sustainability is a large part of this, which includes the tracking, monitoring, and reporting of carbon emissions and energy consumption.Facilities managers are facing a growing issue with unnecessary energy consumption, as energy costs continue to rise. Some organisations are finding it difficult to manage the escalating energy bills and record-high wholesale energy prices. It is a concern placed alongside rising inflation and the significant impact of a cost-of-living crisis in the UK.
The goal is to make energy management easier
Historically our customers whether commercial or private have found it difficult to collect data on energy and water use and can be especially challenging in multi-tenanted buildings with shared spaces and no submetering.
Accumulating and analysing this data can be a time and resource intensive process which can involve manually collecting data from utility bills and supplier invoices. This way of collecting, analysing, and reporting data has several major drawbacks, which include:
- Facilities managers can’t track energy use in real-time when there is significant lag time between on-site consumption and receiving utility bills.
- Utility bills do not give you granular insight into energy use in different parts or the building or at different times of day.
- Actual consumption will be estimated if you do not provide accurate energy consumption data.
There are tools available that track energy use alone. While this is useful, getting actionable insight from energy, sustainability and risk data gives a better view of what is going on in your building. This will also help different departments work together with the same set of data.
A range of data can be monitored for insights that help manage buildings. This includes demand tracking to ensure systems are using an expected amount of energy. Lighting and heating systems can be matched to building occupancy times to optimise energy usage.
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Unlocking the data from your buildings can reduce the cost of energy and carbon emissions
Energy consumption and carbon emissions are under greater scrutiny. Getting data from your building isn’t hard. Optimising energy management is the challenge and getting useable real-time insights into the hands of facilities managers is the solution.
How can Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS) help?
Utilising Zurich insite, you will be able to:
- Use your own data to achieve safer, smarter and more sustainable buildings whilst improving financial and operational performance.
- Identify ways to save energy and reduce carbon emissions to meet carbon reduction targets and sustainability regulations. We'll show you where your energy use doesn't match what you need.
- Prolong the lifetime and efficiency of assets by adopting a risk-based approach to maintenance.
- Consult with our award-winning risk engineering teams on an ongoing basis for risk identification, assessment, risk insights and risk improvements across key areas such as Climate Resilience, Health & Safety, Cyber and Property.
For more information about the services we offer and how they can help you with these issues please contact us at zrs.property.uk@uk.zurich.com
