Building Energy Management: Planning

PLAN

Once you know where energy is used and how, you need to plan for reductions. A first step is thinking about benchmarking and targeting, then integrating this into a plan.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing your energy use with good practice metrics. This can help to determine what sort of energy use reduction targets to set yourself.

SMEasure gives you benchmarks in a number of ways: through weekly overspend, through a DEC A-G performance rating and through typical and best practice energy use per m2 for your building type. These are all linked to the Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers (CIBSE) typical and best practice benchmarks. You can read more about this in the FAQs page here.

If you are part of an organisation with many buildings that have a similar function, such as a retail or theatre chain, you can also benchmark across buildings. Energy use per m2 is the most common metric, but you may also be interested to look at others particularly if, for example, occupancy or throughput has changed.

Targetting means setting yourself targets, and these can be in relation to benchmarks. Target setting is iterative and will be specific to a particular organisation. But it is worth keeping the following in mind: • Consider using multiple targets. Overall targets, such as relating to the DEC A-G rating and overspend, as well as disaggregated targets, such as for gas and electricity use separately.
• Make sure your target is achievable. The analysis done in the first stage of building energy management can guide you in this. You may consider having ‘threshold goals’ that indicate the minimum level of change required, and ‘stretch goals’ that go further and may have an incentive attached. For a more detailed discussion of setting particular targets, see pages 14-16 in the Carbon Trust’s ‘Monitoring and Targetting’ publication available here
• Discuss targets with the relevant stakeholders and ensure that everyone is happy with them.

SMEasure already gives you target metrics - in terms of overspend, per unit area and a DEC A-G energy rating. But again, you may wish to look more broadly at setting targets.

Two types of target you might consider are:

Precedence based targets (i.e. using 10% less than this time last year) is one option, but be careful that you control for other variables that might have changed between years such as degree days, throughput or numbers of energy-using units installed, such as computers. Also, exclude weeks with unusually high or low energy use.

Activity based targets are energy use targets in relation to the driving factors that strongly determine energy use in your buildings (i.e. a 10% reduction in energy use per degree day). What these driving factors are will be distilled in the analysis stage. This is particularly useful where there is an obvious driving factor influencing energy use, such as in a factory or workshop where goods are being made. For a discussion of more complex forms of activity based targeting see here.

Plan: Realistic targets need to be integrated into a management plan detailing how to implement changes and achieve targets. Suggested headings for this plan are – AIMS & TARGETS, the associated ACTIONS/MEANS, the RESOURCES needed, assigning of RESPONSIBILITY, and the TIME FRAMES INVOLVED. For the latter, you might consider short (next year), medium (next 3 yearas) and longer term actions (5-10 years).

Involve stakeholders in brainstorming, setting targets and suggesting means of achieving energy efficiency gains. Make sure you have buy in from all involved in your action plan.