The Building Advisor

Before Building Star’s proposed legislation gets commercial building owners an enticing $3 billion in saved utilities, energy efficient solutions must be identified.

With proposed legislation originally put forth by by Sens. Jeff Merkley and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) on the table to create tax rebates and low-interest loans toward energy efficient improvements in commercial buildings, building owners and their service providers need to be ready to scale their efforts in evaluating energy consumption and recommending improvements.  Using technology that automates and standardizes the process, like AirAdvice’s BuildingAdvice program, would enable just this sort of scale.

Being able to quickly and easily generate EnergyStar benchmark reports and other assessment reports will be key in an economic environment which incentivizes efficiency upgrades. By proposing to leverage two to three dollars in private investment for every federal dollar spent, Building Star has gained supporters from the USGBC to PIMA to NEMA.  Because of this, demand for upgrades will increase, and HVAC contractors’ access to diagnostic services such as BuildingAdvice will be the first step toward those upgrades

And you can’t improve what you don’t measure.  Greater automation of evaluation and reporting means that building engineers can quickly identify energy savings opportunities (usually averaging approximately 20%) from upgrades, retrofits and improvements for which the rebates and loans could be used.

Hopefully the Building Star legislation will move forward quickly and help to overcome the financing hurdle in making energy efficient improvements.  But, even if the legislation doesn’t pass or if it takes a long time, there is no reason to wait.  Most buildings can expect to see 5-30% in savings on energy costs simply be implementing various low- and no-cost energy conservation measures.  With savings like these possible with little upfront cost, why wait?