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You may be thinking: how can my building be emitting so much CO2? The term “CO2 emissions from buildings” is a misnomer. The emissions are not pouring out of a smokestack atop your office, apartment building or local shopping mall. But they are pouring out of smokestacks atop the power plants that provide the electricity to run these buildings. That’s where most of the CO2 emissions attributed to buildings are coming from.

In fact, buildings consume more than 40% of all the energy produced in the world – and the CO2 emissions that come with it.

Only 20% of a building’s total energy consumption comes from its construction.
80% is used in running its systems.

A building needs a lot of energy to keep its occupants safe, comfortable and productive. It has to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer, provide lighting, power security systems and heat water, among many other things. Buildings are inevitably going to consume a great deal of energy, and along with that consumption will be energy going to waste and CO2 emissions entering the atmosphere.

These day-to-day operations are run by various systems within the building. Traditionally, larger buildings have individual systems for lighting, access, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, security, etc. Each of these systems exists as silos, running independently of all the others. As such, they have to be monitored and adjusted separately. With all these independent systems unable to talk to each other, the synergies required to reduce energy consumption building- wide cannot exist.

The simple fact is that most buildings weren’t designed with efficiency in mind. Today, that means most buildings are wasting tremendous amounts of energy, to say nothing of the money they waste for their owners.

The first step in lowering energy use in buildings is being able to manage it. That’s why it is essential for building owners and architects to ensure a system is in place to integrate the various building systems and allow for energy management across all of them. The technology exists, as do ROI models. Now, it’s simply a matter of resolve on behalf on building owners, architects and their advisors.

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