From the point of view of someone who runs buildings: the so-called holy grails of energy efficiency. Audits, metering, decarbonisation, certification, ESG, “intelligent” controls. Most of them do not save energy by themselves.
First example. Intelligent building controls, configured and operated at the end by some guy who thinks in technical superstition and has no interest in using less energy. Weather-compensated supply temperature will not outsmart him. Just in case, he forces the heating valve on the air handling unit to “200%” open. A time schedule? What is that for? There were no schedules in the old days and it was fine. So he sets 30 hours a day, 8 days a week. Abstract? That is daily life in thousands of buildings.
More on what does not cut energy use, so you can avoid it and use the technology you already have. This is not conspiracy talk. It is practice, with some satire. What gives me the right to lecture? Thirteen years of intensive work in operation and energy efficiency. Plenty of people in the trade are sharper than I am. I am, however, very effective. On building after building the saving lands between 5% and 30%. That suggests I know something.
In one day, an ordinary larger building, a mall, a factory, an office, can waste as much energy as an average flat uses in a year. How do you fail to catch it? By trusting the holy grails below. They are supposed to improve efficiency. Here is why they often do not.
1. A meter on every circuit, every appliance, every toilet cistern
My favourite. I have never met an energy meter that saves energy. You can meter every circuit, every lamp, every toilet, and nothing happens by itself. Only interpretation, and then a sensible action, does anything. A pointless surplus of meters, one per toilet, even adds carbon over the life of the building, because the meters were unnecessary.
2. “Intelligent” controls, a BMS or an EMS
So maybe a building management system is what improves efficiency? Same as metering. A BMS on its own does nothing. It is a tool. Without someone who sets it properly and notices when it is wrong, it contributes nothing. In the right hands it helps a great deal. That is the only reason my own results are as good as they are. And a system sold as an intelligent BMS can be botched so badly that it closes off half the optimisations you could have made.
3. Replacing plant with efficient equipment
You can force a new machine to run in an inefficient regime just as easily as an old one.
More efficient equipment does not, by itself, make the building efficient. It can use the same energy as the old kit, or more. You get the effect only when the replacement is designed, installed and, above all, operated with a brain.
4. A refurbishment, a new design, an architect’s vision, and a lot of money
Especially on public projects: a brand-new building that uses more energy, because there is more equipment to misuse.
Optimisation by refurbishment is a wish. Contractors, programmers and operators stand between the idea and the result. Botch one or two of those stages and efficiency goes down. I have seen ultra-modern buildings use more energy, and produce a larger carbon footprint, than older, simpler buildings that were built and run properly.
A concrete botch: the design has hundreds of variable-air-volume boxes, and they end up programmed as constant-volume boxes. I have seen two top-tier Warsaw office buildings done that way. Add cosy relationships between designers and manufacturers, and copy-paste specifications. Another day.
5. A neural-network optimiser on the district-heating substation
Yes and no. If the building, an office or a mall, has controllable terminals, there is not much left to gain by endlessly trimming the substation on its own. A bit crudely: it is like saving petrol by optimising the pump at the filling station instead of the engine.
Drop the supply temperature and the valves on the heater batteries open further. They still have to make the same air temperature. Cutting the substation off from the rest of the installation only half makes sense. You might get a quarter of the effect you would get by optimising the substation together with the terminals.
A smart controller on the heat source alone does make sense where the terminals are passive, like radiators. Older, simpler buildings: public offices, schools, radiators wide open 24 hours. Even there, setting the substation controller properly and looking after those settings would capture half, maybe two thirds, of what the clever system delivers. Someone has to want to. That, quietly, is the actual holy grail.
6. BREEAM, LEED, WELL
Use the certificate only as marketing and the whole thing is a waste. It will carbonise the planet and nothing else.
Certifications do contain good requirements, such as the quality of finishes. They have a weak effect on efficiency in operation. Sometimes they increase the carbon footprint, because a pile of gadgets gets installed and then never used, even though it could have been.
The best gadget is useless if nobody uses it.
To be fair, recertification has started to look at actual consumption over previous years. That is partly regression to the mean, but it is one of the few things that actually pushes a building to use less.
7. A facility-management contract that says “energy efficiency”
The biggest sham. In nine cases out of ten the work is done by the cheapest technician they could find. The rest is marketing, suits, and corporate ritual with no contact with the plant.
Correct operation is critical. In practice this is one of the great lies of the market, because the money does not reach the people on the tools. Almost every firm advertises energy efficiency and claims to be greener than British racing green. The money goes to marketing, directors, foreign owners, HR, and consultants for ESG, DEI and the rest of the acronym pile. Technicians get what is left, which is enough to hire whoever will turn up. A screwdriver in the hand, keep the building running. That person, short on knowledge and on any reason to care, wants a quiet life. They will do exactly what they are told, without thinking, or according to a superstition from the previous era.
There are exceptions. I started at that level and I tried, and I often meet people who are better than me at a specific job. The system, though, rewards passivity and mediocrity. If something goes well, a technician might get a pat on the back. Forget a bonus. If something goes wrong, trouble is almost guaranteed. I am not only complaining. That gap is why an independent operator can still show better numbers. I would not be writing this if I did not want it to change.
8. An energy audit
You can stack audits until you have a hat made of them. A cheap audit, written by someone far from the plant, or by a chatbot, is worth about as much as the paper.
Mandatory audits are usually virtual audits, done on paper. Forcing companies toward efficiency with a stick, meaning a regulation, is a poor tool. The company pays an audit firm. The audit is often written by students or by people who have never operated a building. A lot of them read as if an assistant, human or AI, produced them. No surprise, when the selection criterion is price and the client does not actually want to improve.
Audits can be good, and sometimes they are. Do not expect much when someone was forced to buy one.
So what actually works?
I have been complaining that it does not work. Everything on the list above was built with a good intention, and all of it can work. It works only with a real wish to improve and with an open head. A knife cuts bread or commits a robbery. Same object.
What is the holy grail, the final answer to efficiency?
A bit philosophical for an engineer, but it starts in people’s heads. That is where the efficiency problem sits. Technology is the road and the tools. The decision is made earlier. Abstract? I have just shown how, in practice, every good tool for saving energy gets killed.
How do you change the way people think? It is not easy. You can try.
- The carrot. Saving has to pay. The people who do it should get something out of it, money and recognition, not a punishment at the first problem or even the first suspicion of a problem.
- Fewer norms treated as scripture. People have had their heads stuffed with standards and regulations which, despite good intentions, get enforced blindly even when they make no sense in the particular case.
- Propaganda for efficiency. A lie repeated often enough is said to become the truth. Why not reverse that? That is what I do. I lobby for efficiency and I point at the problems that have to be solved. Public institutions are not, so far, an example of efficiency. I would like officials to treat every unit of currency as their employers’ money, meaning the taxpayers’. It is our job to demand that.
- Children. Efficiency, responsibility for resources, cleaning up after yourself, respect for other people’s work: that belongs in school. What children learn there spreads back to their parents.
Polish version: Co NIE jest złotym Gralem efektywności i optymalizacji energetycznej?.
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