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Why is it important to decarbonize buildings? Transitioning to energy-efficient and sustainable building management is essential to achieving the COP 28 climate goals. This shift reduces public and private expenditure and lowers consumer energy bills. Additionally, it fosters healthier and more comfortable living and working environments by improving indoor air quality and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Beyond environmental benefits, decarbonizing buildings is a significant economic driver, potentially creating over three million jobs as demand grows for retrofitting and installing energy-saving technologies.
Technology makes the realization of these goals, and their associated benefits, possible. In buildings, technologies and tools exist today that enable electrification and digitization to reduce electrical bills while lowering carbon emissions.
Recent study describes how to optimize building decarbonization
The Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) has recently completed months of detailed energy consumption and efficiency-related research. The analysis evaluated 126 unique scenarios, focusing on seven building segments across nine geographic regions (California, Florida, Ontario, Massachusetts, eastern China, France, Denmark, Italy, and Spain). Each scenario leverages localized data for weather, solar irradiance (how much solar power is shining down on a specific area at a given time), grid CO2 content, smart electricity tariff structures, and asset performance/costs.
The recent SRI report “Decarbonizing Buildings to the Benefits of Consumers and System Operators” is one of a series of reports that will be published and presents over 30 research-driven charts and graphs that consolidate and compare global building energy data findings. In gathering this data, the SRI research team ran thousands of simulations that factored in building type, geography, and microgrid option variables.
Best practices that cut costs and enhance emissions reductions
To achieve the deep decarbonization required to meet emissions and fuel consumption targets, digitization and electrification of building operations must play a critical role. Traditional energy efficiency measures (better insulation, lighting controls, and building management system software) are no longer sufficient for today’s buildings. SRI research reveals that true smart buildings must manage, in an integrated manner, four important technological elements:
- Energy efficiency/Building management system (BMS)
- Rooftop solar
- Battery energy storage/microgrid
- Heat pumps
Although each of these technologies contributes to decarbonization and lower energy bills on their own, buildings achieve optimized decarbonization only when the four elements link and maximize performance through digitization and electrification.
The SRI research project also observed several trends regarding the integration / lack of integration of these critical decarbonization elements.
Digitization drives optimization
Digitization empowers building owners to boost energy performance in multiple ways:
- Expanding the impact of management systems – By enabling more granular control over ventilation, heating, cooling and other building environmental infrastructure, digital management systems allow building owners to move beyond basic efficiency measures. These smart systems uncover new areas for optimization that were never recognizable in the past.
- Continuous data collection and analysis – Access to more data offers new levels of insight into energy consumption patterns and building behaviors. This empowers building owners to take informed decisions, implement targeted improvements, and track the progress of their energy-saving initiatives.
Decarbonized buildings are NOT detrimental to the grid system operations
The SRI research report shows that the burden on the grid of deploying such an integrated electrified and digitized system is far less than expected. This is important because consuming too much power can result in steep financial penalties (in the US) and an outright power cut (in Europe) when the building owners exceed maximum energy allotments.
In fact, during the research study, very few facilities experienced issues with peak load. This is because the BMS-managed higher efficiency (which resulted in reduced energy consumption) compensates for the electrification of the heat pump. In addition, many of the facilities were using power generated from their solar panels and not from the grid. This also helped to compensate for the increased power consumption of heat pump operation. The net result is much lower energy bills.
Rooftop solar, batteries, and digitization drive synergistic cost and carbon reduction benefits
More comprehensive approaches help drive deeper decarbonization. By proactively integrating elements such as real-time energy behavior, utility tariff data, and weather forecasting data, building owners can strategically manage energy storage batteries and solar production. They offer themselves the flexibility of consuming grid power during periods when utility tariffs are low, and reselling excess power to the grid (if the local utility supports such programs) when energy prices are high, thereby minimizing costs, lowering CO2 emissions, and reducing peak demand.
Learn more about building digitization and decarbonization strategies
To learn more, download the recent Sustainability Research Institute report “Decarbonizing Buildings to the Benefits of Consumers and System Operators” or visit our website for additional SRI research.
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