Energy Benchmarking In The Capitol Revealed Red Flags

Posted: Jan 29, 2011 |Comments: 0 |

Recently, the District of Columbia became one of the first government organizations in history to publicly promote its system-wide efficiency. The District started to invest in measures to better understand its use of energy throughout its almost 200 public buildings. By energy benchmarking, it hopes to cut back on its use of electricity, natural gas, and other fuels and consequently reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy benchmarking has become one of the hot topics of conversation in the boardroom of today. The measures taken by the District of Columbia are in tune with other programs put forward by the city of New York and the city of San Francisco. Each public body is seeking to better understand how it uses energy and how it can become far more fiscally responsible by setting standards and initiating efficiency projects.

The District of Columbia revealed a lot of information showing how its fire stations, schools, office buildings and police stations are far from efficient. As compared to the national average, these buildings use a lot more energy. If this energy benchmarking study had not been initiated by the district, we would not have been aware of these shortcomings.

The District of Columbia is making use of federal stimulus funds to help deliver energy efficiency improvements. In addition, the District Council's Clean and Affordable Energy Act has also stated that commercial entities in the area must calculate and maintain energy efficiency, as well.

The District of Columbia's energy benchmarking plan has caught the attention of many a commercial organization across the country. They are now beginning to realize how valuable a benchmarking initiative could be in this situation.

To be truly energy-efficient, you need to look at asset level performance. You need to gather and maintain granular information and use it to establish energy benchmarking. Now you can easily see where inefficiencies live and initiate energy efficiency projects, accordingly. You can see what projects work and what don't and capitalize on the best opportunities.

Many organizations treat a relationship with a utility provider as a pure business to business transaction. It needs to be more of a partnership than this however and the utility companies themselves need to make sure that their game is elevated. A greater selection of different tariffs and projects will be attractive to organizations as they seek to curtail usage. Energy needs to be fine-tuned by energy benchmarking.

Energy will undoubtedly remain one of the largest costs associated with any business operation. Consequently it's not surprising to see that energy benchmarking solutions represented by commercially available software products today are quickly becoming some of the most important tools under consideration.

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