One of the most widely used axioms in modern business management is “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”. Proper measurement of a building’s current energy performance is a fundamental of energy management. Sometimes this measurement is done through the provision of an energy “audit” by a qualified engineering firm. Many public energy efficiency agencies insist on an energy audit prior to providing any financial support for subsequent energy efficiency improvements. Unfortunately, there are a lot of commercial and industrial buildings that have never gone through an energy audit.
In the absence of doing a full energy audit, another approach is to at least benchmark the energy performance of a commercial or industrial building through an analysis of its energy bills. Even this simple undertaking has not been widely done, and is just starting to become a trend among larger North American cities. The following article provides a good overview of the situation in the United States.
NY vs. DC: Who Wins in Building Energy Benchmarking?
As this article highlights, most of the benchmarking being done is a simple snapshot of utility bills compared against the square footage of the building. This provides a starting point…but it is not enough.
The future? I feel it is going to be real-time measurement of energy usage in a building as part of an energy audit. This “dynamic benchmarking” provides an objective and accurate measurement of energy usage prior to any retrofit work and then a verification of actual savings following the energy retrofit.
